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50+ Viktor Frankl Quotes on Meaning, Survival, & Self-Actualization

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Viktor Frankl Quotes

50+ Viktor Frankl Quotes on Meaning, Survival, & Self-Actualization

Viktor Frankl Quotes on Meaninglessness

“Ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man. 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. Logos is deeper than logic.” — Viktor Frankl

“This mass neurosis, meaninglessness, is to be explained mainly in two directions: first, in contrast to an animal, man is not told by drives and instinct what he simply must do. Furthermore, in contrast to many former times, today he is no longer told by traditions and traditionally and universally held values what he should do. Now, neither knowing what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes seems no longer to know what he basically wishes to do. What is the consequence? Either he just wishes to do what other people are doing—this is conformism—or else he just does what other people wish him to do—this is totalitarianism. This is the origin of the existential vacuum.” — Viktor Frankl

“The ‘existential vacuum’ is the feeling of meaninglessness, the feeling of emptiness, a sense of futility, existential frustration.” — Viktor Frankl

“It depends on whether or not you are exposed to indoctrination … Indoctrination to the effect that man is nothing but a mechanism, nothing than the outcome of conditioning or psychodynamic processes, nothing but just a computer. If you indoctrinate people along these lines, small wonder if they are purged out from any enthusiasm or idealism. What is necessary is to think great of man.” — Viktor Frankl

“Societies are out virtually to satisfy and gratify each and every human need except for one need—the most basic and fundamental need operant in man—the need for meaning.” — Viktor Frankl

“Consumer societies are even creating needs, but the need for meaning—or as I’m used to referring to it, the ‘will to meaning’—remains unfulfilled. It’s what I’m used to calling recently ‘the unheard cry for meaning.’” — Viktor Frankl

“We must counter the negative propaganda of recent times, the propaganda of ‘Non-Sense,’ of ‘Non-Meaning,’ with another propaganda that must be, firstly, individual and, secondly, active. Only then can it be positive.” — Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl Quotes on Meaning

“A ‘will to meaning’—the wish to find and to fulfill meaning—is the basic motivation in human beings … A will to meaning is the desire/impulse to find/discover in each concrete life situation confronting someone a meaning therein and to go on to fulfill it.” — Viktor Frankl

“‘Logos’ just means ‘meaning’. ‘Logotherapy’ could be defined as a psychotherapeutic approach which specifically focuses on meaning and regards man as a being who is in search for meaning—in the sense of his or her most fundamental motivational force.” — Viktor Frankl

“What man needs is … ‘noö-dynamics,’ i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfill it.” — Viktor Frankl

“Man cannot be healthy without meaning … Man is primarily being reaching out for meaning … One of the most important phenomena in human life is man’s reaching out for a meaning to his existence, and even more he’s reaching out for an ultimate meaning to existence … The essentially self-transcendent quality of human existence renders man a being reaching out beyond himself.” — Viktor Frankl

“Meaning can be found by each and every person irrespective of his age, irrespective of his sex, irrespective of his educational background, irrespective of his IQ, irrespective of his personal character, structure, or psychological make-up, irrespective of environment … Meaning is available to man, in principle, irrespective of whether or not he is religious—and if he is religious, to which denomination he belongs.” — Viktor Frankl

“The meaning of life can only be a specific one, specific both in relation to each individual person and in relation to each individual hour: the question that life asks us changes both from person to person, and from situation to situation … Meaning is what is meant by a situation.” — Viktor Frankl

“True meaning cannot be given, it has to be found, and it has to be found by your conscience … Conscience is a phenomenon profoundly personalized.” — Viktor Frankl

“Man is someone who has to move toward a meaning to fulfill.” — Viktor Frankl

“Life never ceases to have a meaning for each and any person.” — Viktor Frankl

“The problem is to maintain the potential meaningfulness of life in spite of its transitoriness.” — Viktor Frankl

“Meaning can be found under each and every condition in life—even under the worst conceivable conditions.” — Viktor Frankl

“Humor is most human … The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.” — Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl Quotes on Survival & Ways to Meaning

“The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.” — Viktor Frankl

“The question was not just survival, but there had to be a ‘why’ of survival. The question was survival for what? Unless there was something or someone, a personal cause for whose sake to survive, there was survival scarcely possible.” — Viktor Frankl

“I applied the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper: you cannot prove any hypothesis—the only thing you can do is falsify it, show that it is not valid, that it is not tenable … I applied this theory in as much as I told myself, ‘Viktor, the chances are very, very low and small. Probably you will be sent to the gas chamber.’ And still, there is nobody who can guarantee me and convince me with 100% certainty that I shall not survive but end in the gas chamber. As long as I have no guarantee that I will have to die within the next days, I continue behaving and acting as if I would spare this fate.” — Viktor Frankl

“Neither pleasure, nor happiness, nor power, nor prestige … Originally and basically, his wish and desire is to find and fulfill a meaning in his life—or for that matter, in each single life situation confronting him. If there is a meaning to fulfill, if he is aware and becomes cognizant of such a meaning, then he’s ready to suffer—to offer sacrifices, to undergo tension, stress, and so forth—without any harm being done to his to health.” — Viktor Frankl

“Right on this spot, there has to be a meaning, even to our suffering, even at the risk that we will not survive—and each day has to be turned into something meaningful. That was our challenge. That was what counted most.” — Viktor Frankl

“When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task … No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.” — Viktor Frankl

“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.” — Viktor Frankl

“Despair is suffering without meaning. As long as an individual cannot find, cannot see, any meaning in his or her suffering, he or she will certainly be prone to despair … The moment they can see a meaning in their suffering, they can mold it into an achievement—they can mold their predicament into an accomplishment … they can turn their tragedies into a personal triumph.” — Viktor Frankl

“In the final analysis, those who were oriented toward a meaning—a meaning to be fulfilled by them in the future—were most likely to survive.” — Viktor Frankl

“Survival (was) dependent decisively on whether or not the respective individual was directed toward a future—toward a task waiting for him in the future, toward a work to complete in the future, or toward being reunited with a loved person in the future.” — Viktor Frankl

“The orientation toward a future—toward a personal task waiting for them to be fulfilled in their future, or another person whom they were loving to be reunited with them again in the future—was what was decisively upholding these people … The orientation beyond oneself.” — Viktor Frankl

“Work and love are the main avenues leading up to meaning … There is a possibility that we make ourselves our own work.” — Viktor Frankl

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.” — Viktor Frankl

“Meaning can be found in life principally through three avenues: 1) Creative: by doing a deed or creating a work, 2) Experiential: by experiencing something or lovingly encountering someone, 3) Attitudinal: by finding a meaning in suffering by the very attitude we adopt toward it by courageously going through and shouldering our suffering.” — Viktor Frankl

“There are three main avenues leading up to meaning fulfillment:

  1. (work/creative) through creating a work or doing a deed;
  2. (love/experiential) through experiencing someone in his very uniqueness and this means loving;
  3. (attitude) if you are confronted with a fate you no longer can change, if you are confronted say with an incurable disease, with an inoperable cancer, even then you may find a meaning, you may even the deep as possible, the highest conceivable meaning, because you then have an opportunity to bear witness of the human potential at its best, of the most human of all human capacities which is to turn a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn your predicament into an achievement on the human level.”

Viktor Frankl Quotes on Choice & Responsibility

“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” — Viktor Frankl

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.” — Viktor Frankl

“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 … No matter the circumstance, you always have the last of the human freedoms: to choose your attitude.” — Viktor Frankl

“Our freedom is a finite freedom, a limited freedom. That is to say, a human being is never fully free from conditions—be they biological, psychological, or sociological. But, the ultimate freedom is always, and remains always, reserved to ourselves. That is the freedom to take a stand to whatever conditions might confront us. How we react to the unchangeable conditions is up to ourselves. In other words, if we cannot change a situation, we have always the last freedom to change our attitude to that situation.” — Viktor Frankl

“The human spirit is capable to defy both outer and inner circumstances to an unbelievable degree.” — Viktor Frankl

“Incessantly you are confronted with the necessity to make choices.” — Viktor Frankl

“The ‘metaphysics of everyday life’ only at first leads us out of everyday life, but then—consciously and responsibly—it leads us back into everyday life.” — Viktor Frankl

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

“Death could well serve as an incentive to responsible action because if we were immortal then we could postpone everything.” — Viktor Frankl

“A situation confronting me has a meaning inherent and dormant. It is a call and a challenge addressed to me, and I have to respond. And, this business of responding is one of the fundamental features characterizing human life, human existence—it’s responsibleness. Not in the moralistic sense of responsibilities I have to fulfill, but of deeply profoundly being responsible—by responding, or better to say, responding in a responsible way. So, I have to make a choice incessantly: what is demanded of me by a situation, or what is demanded of me in terms of which potentiality to actualize?” — Viktor Frankl

“Meaning is unique. Each person is going to fulfill this unique meaning in a unique situation. The person is also unique. This two-fold uniqueness makes for one’s responsibleness … A person a person is always something absolutely unique, irrepeatable in the evolution of the cosmos, incomparable with any other human being … Analogous to the functional value of the single cell for the whole organism, the unique individuality of each human being is given value through its relationship with an overarching whole; namely, a human community.” — Viktor Frankl

“Man should not ask what is the meaning of my life but really should understand and interpret himself as he who is asked by life. Life is asking questions to him. He has to respond by reacting to the challenges of life in a responsible way.” — Viktor Frankl

“‘I have nothing to expect from my life anymore’ … Isn’t it conceivable that instead life expects something from you?” — Viktor Frankl

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” — Viktor Frankl

“The question can no longer be ‘What can I expect from life?’ but can now only be ‘What does life expect of me?'” — Viktor Frankl

“It’s not up to us to ask the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ Upon closer scrutiny, we might become aware in the final analysis that we are those who are asked. Life is asking questions to us—questions we answer not by verbal replies but by action, by doing something. Each situation confronting us implies a question, but this question can only be answered by our deeds, by our acting—and if the situation necessitates, to just to shoulder it because we cannot do anything about it.” — Viktor Frankl

“One may only demand heroism of one person, and that person is oneself.” — Viktor Frankl

“Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.” — Viktor Frankl

“In the past nothing is lost, but on the contrary, everything is stored forever. It is not annihilated by transitoriness, but on the contrary, it is becoming preserved forever. Something you have done can never be undone … What you have done has been done forever—in both a negative and a positive way—it cannot be undone. The past is a storehouse of what you have done, what you have experienced, what you have gone through—and what you have done out of all the negative and tragic aspects encountered within your life.” — Viktor Frankl

“We do not judge the life history of a particular person by the number of pages in the book that portrays it but only by the richness of the content it contains.” — Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl Quotes on Happiness, Success, & Self-Actualization

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy’ … a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy.” — Viktor Frankl

“Happiness cannot be pursued but has to ensue by not paying attention to it.” — Viktor Frankl

“As long as you are aiming at happiness, you cannot obtain it. The more you make it a target, the more you miss it … At that moment that you are no longer concerned with becoming happy, happiness installs Itself by itself.” — Viktor Frankl

“Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen.” — Viktor Frankl

“Listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run—in the long run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.” — Viktor Frankl

“Do not hunt for success. Do not care for success. Just do what your conscience commands you to do. If you are responsible human beings, you will follow and obey your conscience. In the long run, then success will come to you precisely because you have not cared for it. By just doing things for the cause’s sake, or for others sake but not for your own sake, then success comes by itself automatically. This is the real success.” — Viktor Frankl

“Life is a chain of unique situations implying unique potentialities to be actualized in a meaningful way.” — Viktor Frankl

“The less you try to find yourself and to actualize yourself—the more you care for the meaning out there in the world waiting to be fulfilled by you exclusively—the easier you will have actualized yourself.” — Viktor Frankl

“The less you care for happiness, for self-actualization, and so forth—the more you give yourself and forget yourself—the more you are fully human and you become fully yourself.” — Viktor Frankl

“Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” — Viktor Frankl

“What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.” — Viktor Frankl

“Self-actualization can only fall into your lap automatically once you have fulfilled a concrete meaning… Then, you actualize yourself as a byproduct.” — Viktor Frankl

“Self-actualization is all okay, but you can obtain it—you can arrive at it, it is available to you—only via meaning fulfillment or self-transcendence. If you are transcending yourself by giving yourself—if you are forgetting yourself, if you are not caring for yourself, not for your own self-actualization or the actualization of your potentialities—then you are actualizing yourself by forgetting and giving yourself via self-transcendence.” — Viktor Frankl

“You become yourself. You become a truly human being. You actualize yourself precisely to the amount to which you don’t concentrate on self-actualization. You forget yourself. You give yourself to the task at hand, to the challenge of a situation—listening to what a situation means to you. Meaning is what is meant by a given situation.” — Viktor Frankl

“Self-actualization can only fall into your lap automatically once you have fulfilled a concrete meaning and done the best in a situation. Then you actualize yourself as a byproduct.” — Viktor Frankl

“Man need not fear that he will meet contradictions or will have to deny his humanness when he transcends his human world toward the divine world. He has not to deny his humanness, but he will fulfill his humanness.” — Viktor Frankl

“A higher dimension is to be defined as the more inclusive dimension … This means that there is no mutual exclusiveness but mutual inclusiveness.” — Viktor Frankl

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