- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.’
- 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.
- When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
- 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.
- Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.
- Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
- 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.
- Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.
- Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
- Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
- The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is.
15 Inspirational Quotes by Viktor E. Frankl
