Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.

The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.

Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.

Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.

The last freedom is choosing your attitude.

I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

It isn't the past which holds us back, it's the future; and how we undermine it, today.

Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.

Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.