Viktor Emil Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor. After spending 3 years in a Mauthausen concentration camp, he wrote his most famous work, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Frankl discusses how people faced with difficult circumstances have the opportunity to find meaning in what they do and how they do it. He argues that the meaning of life is found in how we face and respond to challenges no matter what those challenges are.
Frankl’s theory can be applied to modern society in several ways. In the face of adversity, individuals are faced with choices on how they should respond to their situation. One alternative is to give up on their personal goals or values and succumb to their circumstances without any struggle or fight, which leads them towards meaninglessness.
“At the end of his life, Viktor Frankl, considered the father of logotherapy and author of “Man’s Search for Meaning,” put it this way: “The meaning we find in our work and our lives is the greatest good that can happen to us.”
His idea that finding a meaningful purpose can be the key to happiness has been significant for generating both social change and business success throughout history and continues to be so today.
Here are some of the most inspiring Viktor Frankl quotes. They will help you to find your purpose in life.
45 Inspirational Viktor Frankl Quotes
1. “Man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate.” ― Viktor Frankl
2. “I do not forget any good deed done to me and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.” ― Viktor Frankl
3. “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.” ― Viktor Frankl
4. “Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.” ― Viktor Frankl
5. “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 Frankl
6. “Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.” ― Viktor Frankl
7. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ― Viktor Frankl
8. “Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.” ― Viktor Frankl
9. “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 ‘unfinished’ are among the most beautiful symphonies.” ― Viktor Frankl
10. “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.” ― Viktor Frankl
11. “Faith is trust in ultimate meaning.” ― Viktor Frankl
12. “Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.” ― Viktor Frankl
13. “Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.” ― Viktor Frankl
14. “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.” ― Viktor Frankl
15. “Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.” ― Viktor Frankl
16. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be 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 Frankl
17. “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!”
18. “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honest whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.” ― Viktor Frankl
19. “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” ― Viktor Frankl
20. “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse. But if we overestimate him…we promote him to what he really can be.” ― Viktor Frankl
21. “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” ― Viktor Frankl
22. “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 Frankl
23. “You don’t create your mission in life – you detect it.” ― Viktor Frankl
24. “To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.” ― Viktor Frankl
25. “When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.” ― Viktor Frankl
26. “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 Frankl
27. “The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is.” ― Viktor Frankl
28. “Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.” ― Viktor Frankl
29. “The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?”
30. “Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny it exists.” ― Viktor Frankl
31. “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 Frankl
32. “What is to give light must endure burning.” ― Viktor Frankl
33. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” ― Viktor Frankl
34. “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 Frankl
35. “Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.” ― Viktor Frankl
36. “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.” ― Viktor Frankl
37. “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 Frankl
38. “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer… his unique opportunity lies in the way he bears his burden.” ― Viktor Frankl
39. “A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.” ― Viktor Frankl
40. “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 Frankl
41. “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.” ― Viktor Frankl
42. “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.” ― Viktor Frankl
43. “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 Frankl
44. “No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.” ― Viktor Frankl
45. “In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” ― Viktor Frankl
Want more great quotes? Check out below!
