Tao Te Ching
Viktor Frankl
1905 – 1997 CE
Brave and insightful concentration camp survivor
A survivor of multiple Nazi concentration camps that claimed the lives of his mother, wife, and brother; Frankl developed a psychological approach—logotherapy—based on vivid personal experiences rather than hypothetical theories. He watched how people’s ability to survive in the most horrendous situations correlated with the degree of meaningfulness they could discover as well as seeing how this mirrored his own ability to live through and survive this almost unimaginable suffering. Before his concentration camp experiences he had already focused his work on depression and suicide which successfully prevented even one Viennese student suicide in 1931. After the war, he became an important inspiration for the humanistic psychology movement, wrote 39 books translated into 49 languages, received 29 honorary Ph.D. degrees and taught in locations all over the world. He convincingly debunked the still prevalent deception of finding happiness in relaxation, vacations, and retirement; and pointed instead toward the struggles of meeting challenges, working toward goals, and—most importantly—projects that make the world a better place.
Lineages
American (USA) Central European Scientists
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Sources
Unlisted Sources
Quotes by Viktor Frankl (14 quotes)
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Comments: Click to comment
“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.”
Comments: Click to comment
“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.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Happiness must happen, it 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”
Comments: Click to comment
“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.”
Comments: Click to comment
“We watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints… which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
Comments: Click to comment
“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
Comments: Click to comment
“What will it matter if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person?”
Comments: Click to comment
“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.”
Comments: Click to comment
“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… you have to let it happen by not caring about it—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
Comments: Click to comment
“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.”
Comments: Click to comment
“Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth.... That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
Comments: Click to comment
Quotes about Viktor Frankl (1 quotes)
“The importance of choice as a route to a life of meaning was central to the thought of Viktor Frankl, one of the founders of existential psychotherapy in the 1940's. 'What is man?' he asked. 'He is being who continually decides what he is.'”
Comments: Click to comment
Comments (0)