50 Motivational Viktor Frankl Quotes

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” — Viktor E. Frankl. Here are 50 Motivational Viktor Frankl Quotes.

Viktor Frankl Quotes

1.“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor E. Frankl

2.“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.” —  Viktor E. Frankl

3.“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” — Viktor E. Frankl

4.“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.” — Viktor E. Frankl

5.“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” — Viktor E. Frankl

6.“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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

7.“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” — Viktor E. Frankl

8.“So 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!” — Viktor E. Frankl

9.“What is to give light must endure burning.” — Viktor E. Frankl

10.“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.” — Viktor E. Frankl

11.“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.” — Viktor E. Frankl

12.“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” — Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl Quotes

13.“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor E. Frankl

14.“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” — Viktor E. Frankl

15.“I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.” — Viktor E. Frankl

16.“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” — Viktor E. Frankl

17.“Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.” — Viktor E. Frankl

18.“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".” — Viktor E. Frankl

19.“Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.” — Viktor E. Frankl

20.“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.” — Viktor E. Frankl

21.“It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.” — Viktor E. Frankl

22.“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” — Viktor E. Frankl

23.“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

24.“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.” — Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl Quotes

25.“What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.” — Viktor E. Frankl

26.“The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.” — Viktor E. Frankl

27.“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 is his specific opportunity to implement it.” — Viktor E. Frankl

28.“A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.” — Viktor E. Frankl

29.“We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.” — Viktor E. Frankl

30.“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” — Viktor E. Frankl

31.“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” — Viktor E. Frankl

32.“Man is originally characterized by his "search for meaning" rather than his "search for himself." The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomes himself.” — Viktor E. Frankl

33.“Ironically enough, in the same way, that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise, a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes... Pleasure is, and must remain a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.” — Viktor E. Frankl

34.“Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.” — Viktor E. Frankl

35.“If there is 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.” — Viktor E. Frankl

36.“I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.” — Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl Quotes

37.“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.” — Viktor E. Frankl

38“Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.” — Viktor E. Frankl

39.“Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.” — Viktor E. Frankl

40.“To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.” — Viktor E. Frankl

41.“For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the meaning of the words,"The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.” — Viktor E. Frankl

42.“There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose” — Viktor E. Frankl

43.“Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.” — Viktor E. Frankl

44.“The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more—except his God.” — Viktor E. Frankl

45.“Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” — Viktor E. Frankl

46.“To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.” — Viktor E. Frankl

47.“When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” — Viktor E. Frankl

48.“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” — Viktor E. Frankl

49.“For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.” — Viktor E. Frankl

50.“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality” — Viktor E. Frankl