VIKTOR E. FRANKL

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.

A human being is a deciding being.

Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

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.

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

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

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.

The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.

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.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

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.

Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.

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.

Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.

A thought transfixed me: 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 the highest goal to which man can aspire.

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.

A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.