More Quotes by Viktor Frankl
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.
Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.
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 highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.
Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
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.
