Viktor Frankl was a well-known neurologist, psychiatrist and also philosopher. Of Austrian origin belonging to the 20th century, he lived from 1905 to 1997 and He was well known for being the founder of speech therapy as therapy and existential analysis
His exceptionality lies in the fact that he lived for almost four years (1942 – 1945) in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwiz and Dachau.
The 70 most famous phrases of Viktor Frankl
As a result of these arduous and difficult experiences, Vicktor Frankl wrote a book titled “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which would soon become a best-seller.
Man’s Search for Meaning was published under two different names: in 1959 it was published in 1959 as From Death-Camp to Existentialism and in 1962 as Man’s Search for Meaning.
But the truth is that throughout his life he published more than 20 books. His legacy of thoughts, famous quotes and ideas is extensive and rich and In this article we leave you the 70 best phrases by Viktor Frankl most of them taken from his best seller “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
1. When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Phrase that means that facing situations lies in ourselves, not in the situations themselves.
2. Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
Here Viktor Frankl talks to us about altruism and thinking about others.
3. Decisions, not conditions, determine who we are.
Deciding and defending our decisions will shape our ‘I’, beyond external circumstances.
4. Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
Here Frankl once again places value on the sense of will and one’s own decisions.
5. It is not the past that stops us, it is the future; and how we weaken it, today.
Sometimes the future scares us, it doesn’t make us move forward.
6. Our greatest human freedom is that, despite our physical situation in life, we are always free to choose our thoughts!
Freedom lies essentially in choosing and thinking as we really want.
7. Live as if you were living a second time, and as if you had acted wrong the first time.
Make the most of life, learning from your mistakes.
8. No man should judge unless he asks himself with absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same thing.
Here Frankl values empathy.
9. The meaning of my life is helping others find meaning in theirs.
Here he talks again about altruism and generosity, as a way to achieve one’s own happiness.
In this phrase Frankl tells us about respecting and tolerating the opinions and actions of others.
11. Humor is another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.
Humor as a resource to be yourself.
12. There are two races of men in this world, but only these two: the race of the decent man and the race of the indecent man.
In this phrase Frankl tells us about two opposite polarities about the human condition: decency and indecency.
13. Between the stimulus and the response there is a space. In that space we have the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
In this phrase Frankl tells us again about the value of deciding.
14. Pain is only bearable if we know it will end, not if we deny that it exists.
Frankl accepted that pain was part of life, but if we know how to face it, we can better manage happiness.
15. Suffering unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
Here Frankl tells us that it is not worth suffering just to show heroism or bravery.
16. When a man discovers that it is his destiny to suffer… his only chance lies in the way he bears his burden.
Again, Frankl talking about managing the decisions of what surrounds us to be happier.
17. Existential emptiness manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.
Boredom as a prelude to feeling empty.
18. Love is the only way to capture another human being in the deepest core of your personality.
Frankl said that love and its essence are the basis of being human.
19. Logotherapy considers man as a being whose main concern consists of fulfilling a meaning and updating his values, rather than the mere gratification and satisfaction of impulses and instincts.
In this phrase Frankl tells us about one of his contributions to science; logotherapy, which teaches us to have values and plenitude in what you do.
20. Every human being has the freedom to change at any moment.
In this phrase Frankl tells us again about the power of freedom to be who one really wants to be.
21. At last I understood 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 love.
Once again Frankl defends love as the essence of life and of the human being.
22. Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.
In this phrase Frankl once again values freedom, as one of our most precious assets.
23. I do not forget any good deed that has been done to me, and I do not hold a grudge for a bad one.
Phrase that teaches us how not to deny the past, considering it a vehicle to become who we are today.
24. Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you respond to the situation.
Frankl again talking about the weight and value of freedom.
25. When a person cannot find a deep sense of meaning, he becomes distracted by pleasure.
In this phrase Frankl criticizes pleasure as a way of escaping when we don’t really want to face certain things about ourselves.
26. You don’t create your mission in life, you detect it.
In this phrase Frankl says that you intuit the purpose of your life, you see it, you don’t simply believe it.
27. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
In this phrase Frankl talks about coherence with our behaviors.
28. We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a scripture; 2. experiencing a value; and 3. Suffering.
In this phrase Frankl reveals his ideas about existentialism; doing something creative and introspective like writing, living something of value, and suffering for something.
29. If there is any meaning in life, then there must be meaning in suffering.
Life is also made up of suffering and this does not have to be in vain.
30. Trying to develop a sense of humor and see things with humor is a kind of trick learned while mastering the art of living.
Here again Frankl talks to us about humor as a way of salvation while we manage certain things that happen to us.
31. Life is not primarily a search for pleasure, as Freud believed, nor a search for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a search for meaning. The best task for any person is to find meaning in their own life.
In this phrase Frankl speaks to us again about the search for the meaning of life.
32. And then, after taking a few steps in silence, one prisoner said to another: “How beautiful the world could be!”
Phrase that once again refers to the concentration camps, since despite those horrible circumstances, the contemplation of beauty could continue to persist.
33. In some way, suffering stops being suffering the moment it finds a meaning, like the meaning of a sacrifice.
In this phrase Frankl once again puts suffering into value; It gives you meaning in life.
34. Death can only cause fear to those who do not know how to fill the time they are given to live.
In this phrase Frankl teaches us that we must take advantage of life. If not, we will probably be more afraid of death.
35. Man is the son of his past but not its slave, and he is the father of his future.
The past should not be a burden for us, and one should be able to choose one’s future.
36. Being responsible means being selective, choosing.
In this phrase Frankl once again values the fact of choosing.
37. In other words, self-realization cannot be achieved when considered.
This phrase from Frankl tells us that personal fulfillment must occur when it is done without a will or a prior interest.
38. Only to the same extent that man is committed to fulfilling the meaning of his life, to that same extent does he self-realize.
When there is commitment to oneself and one’s sense of existence, there is self-realization.
39. If it is not in your hands to change a situation that causes you pain, you can always choose the attitude with which you face that suffering.
Again through this phrase Frankl tells us about the value of choosing how to face adverse circumstances in life.
40. Man can retain a vestige of spiritual freedom, of mental independence, even in terrible circumstances of mental and physical tension.
Even in adversity, man remains free in thought.
41. Literally speaking, the only thing we owned was our naked existence.
Our true essence is not composed of anything material, but of everything more spiritual.
42. Love is a phenomenon as primary as sex can be. Normally sex is a way of expressing love.
Both sex and love are an essential part of the human being, and one manifests itself through the other.
43. Love is the highest and most essential goal to which human beings can aspire…the fullness of human life is in love and is realized through it.
In this phrase Frankl once again speaks to us about love and its importance and how to reach fulfillment through it.
44. Fear makes what one fears happen.
By being afraid, unfortunately we end up attracting what scares us.
45. Ultimately, living means taking responsibility for finding the right answer to the problems it poses and fulfilling the tasks that life continually assigns to each individual.
In this phrase Frankl tells us about fulfillment, sacrifice, accepting and fulfilling life.
46. You can turn experience into victories, life into an internal triumph.
Once again Frankl tells us how through lived experiences we can find satisfaction and triumph.
47. Freedom is nothing more than the negative aspect of any phenomenon, whose positive aspect is responsibility.
All freedom is subject to the responsibility we have to possess it.
48. Who could blame them for trying to get high under such circumstances? (…) They knew very well that any day they would be replaced by another consignment and they would have to abandon their obligatory role as executors to become victims.
In this phrase Frankl tells us about the concentration camps, and that in the end everyone would end up being victims of heartbreaking experiences.
49. Love is the only way to apprehend another human being in the depths of their personality.
Here Frankl talks to us about love as a way to apprehend, in the sense of deeply feeling what the other is like.
50. The person who knows the “why” of his existence will be able to endure almost any “how.”
In this phrase Frankl tells us that the ‘why’ and the meaning of things justifies the circumstances.
51. Whatever a person becomes – within the limits of their faculties and their environment – they have to do for themselves.
Once again Frankl highlights the freedom to choose and be oneself, as well as the importance of this.
52. When we are no longer capable of changing a situation, we face the challenge of changing ourselves.
In this phrase Frankl tells us that it is essential to change our perception of things as well as our way of thinking, when necessary and before difficult situations.
53. Those of us who were in concentration camps remember the men who went from barracks to barracks comforting others, giving them the last piece of bread they had left. They may have been few in number, but they offered sufficient evidence that everything can be taken from a man except one thing: the last of human freedoms—the choice of one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances—to decide one’s own path.
Again Frankl refers to the concentration camps; of personal freedom that remains intact in the face of all adverse circumstances.
54. Human goodness is found in all groups, even those who generally deserve to be condemned.
In this phrase Frankl talks about kindness as a human condition.
55. And at that moment the whole truth became clear to me and I did what constituted the climax of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I erased all previous life from my consciousness.
In this phrase Frankl once again refers to the concentration camps and how to manage his emotions to move forward.
56. The most painful aspect of beatings is the insult they include.
In this sentence Frankl says between the lines that hitting someone is a way of belittling them.
57. Those who have not undergone a similar experience can hardly conceive the soul-destroying mental conflict nor the conflicts of willpower that a starving man experiences.
In this phrase Frankl once again refers to the concentration camps and the management of emotions there.
58. Despite the physical and mental primitivism that prevailed by force, in the life of the concentration camp it was still possible to develop a profound spiritual life.
Again, another reference to concentration camps and spiritual force.
59. I did not know if my wife was alive, nor did I have any means of finding out (during the entire time of confinement there was no postal contact with the outside), but by then I had stopped caring, I did not need to know, nothing could alter the force of my love, of my thoughts or of the image of my beloved.
In this phrase Frankl once again refers to the concentration camps and how, in those hard moments, reality did not alter his perception of love and his beloved woman.
60. We should not look for an abstract meaning in life, since each one has their own mission to fulfill; Each one must carry out a specific task. Therefore he cannot be replaced in the function, nor can his life be repeated; His task is unique as his opportunity to implement it is unique.
In this phrase Frankl speaks of the will of each person to develop the life they want.
61. Luck is what one does not have to suffer.
In this Frankl phrase that luck is the set of circumstances experienced – whether good or bad -.
62. Life demands a contribution from every individual and it is up to the individual to discover what it is.
In this phrase Frankl talks about how every human being has a mission and objectives in life, which they must find and fulfill.
63. All of us had once believed that we were “someone” or at least we had imagined it. But now they treated us as if we were nobody, as if we did not exist.
In this phrase Frankl once again refers to the concentration camps and how he felt as a nobody, and a common feeling, despite all the construction of personality and character previously developed.
64. Man self-realizes to the same extent that he commits to fulfilling the meaning of his life.
In this phrase Frankl speaks again about self-realization and how it leads to giving meaning to existence.
65. I understood how man, deprived of everything in this world, can still know happiness – even if only momentarily – if he contemplates his loved one.
In this phrase Frankl once again speaks about the essence of love. Love as salvation, when there is nothing left.
66. I am nothing more than a small part of a great mass of human flesh… of a mass locked behind the barbed wire, crowded into a few earthen barracks. A mass of which a percentage decomposes day after day because it no longer has life.
In this phrase Frankl speaks again about the concentration camps; of how nobody he felt there, of the loss of the essence of oneself.
67. As the inner life of the prisoners became more intense, we also felt the beauty of art and nature like never before. Under his influence we came to forget our terrible circumstances.
In this phrase Frankl again talks about the concentration camps and how under those circumstances, they were able to develop an inner world that made them feel alive and able to continue feeling beauty in the world.
68. Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase her, the more she runs away. But if you turn your attention to other things, she comes and gently rests on your shoulder. Happiness is not an inn on the road, but a way of walking through life.
In this phrase Frankl speaks of happiness as an attitude toward life, not as a goal.
69. The consciousness of self-love is so deeply rooted in the highest and most spiritual things that it cannot be uprooted even by living in a concentration camp.
Here Frankl again talks about the concentration camps. He says that love, as an expression of spiritual things, remains intact even in a place as terrible and harsh as a concentration camp.
70. Ruins are often what open the windows to see the sky.
With this last phrase from Viktor Frankl, we are told about suffering as something useful, and a preliminary step to the good things in life.