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Viktor E. Frankl [1905-1997] Austrian
Rank: 4
Psychologist, Psychiatrist


Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of existential analysis, the "Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy".

Life, Attitude, Change, Brainy, Freedom, Happiness, Power, Space, Time, Trust, Wisdom



QuoteTagsRank
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves. Change
38
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human. Brainy, Life
102
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. Attitude
103
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. Life
104
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. Life
105
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. Freedom, Power, Space
106
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
107
When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as an inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves. Change
108
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
109
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
110
The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. Attitude
111
A human being is a deciding being.
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
113
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time. Time
114
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
115
To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Happiness
116
A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.
117
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
118
A thought transfixed me: 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 the highest goal to which man can aspire. Wisdom
119
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'
120
Faith is trust in ultimate meaning. Trust
121
Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
122
Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.
123
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
124
The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.
125
No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
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Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.
201
In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
202
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.
203
Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
204
Religion is the search for ultimate meaning.
205
Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.
206
Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
207
If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.
208
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.
209
When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.
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