568 Quotes by Viktor E. Frankl

Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of.

For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past/.../, wherein nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.

Even if things take such a good in one of a thousand cases, who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.

Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

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. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.

On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return.

No one has the right to do wrong, even if wrong has been done to them.