Quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

A human being is a deciding being.
– Viktor E. Frankl
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.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
– Viktor E. Frankl
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.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
– Viktor E. Frankl
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.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
– Viktor E. Frankl
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.
– Viktor E. Frankl
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it-likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
– Viktor E. Frankl
What is to give light must endure burning.
– Viktor E. Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.
– Viktor E. Frankl
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 human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way.
– Viktor E. Frankl
Man's Search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning... Man, however, is able to live and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!
– Viktor E. Frankl