Quotes from Viktor E. Frankl

freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness.

Frank! would have argued that we are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.

Do not judge the life history of a particular person by the number of pages in the book that portrays it but only by the richness of the content it contains.

Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!'' It seems to me

A human being, it is true, is a finite being. However, to the extent to which he understands his finiteness, he also overcomes it.

man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental well-being. We should not, then, be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency.

Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.

Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.

The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. At

I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence.