Week 2024-01: Viktor E Frankl - Collected Quotes

"At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"At such a moment, it is not the physical pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as much as to punished children); it is the mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"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." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"How can we dare to predict the behavior of man? We may predict the movements of a machine, of an automaton; more than this, we many even try to predict the mechanisms or 'dynamisms' of the human psyche as well. But man is more than psyche." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"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." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him." (Viktor E Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning", 1946)

"It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future." (Viktor Frankl, "From Death-camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist's Path to a New Therapy", 1959)

"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for." (Viktor E Frankl, "The Unheard Cry for Meaning: Psychotherapy and Humanism", 1978)

"There is nothing in the world that empowers a human being to overcome external difficulties or internal hardships so much as the awareness that one has a task in life." (Viktor E Frankl)

Week 2019-23

"All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything." (Swami Vivekananda)

"What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized." (Leonard Mlodinow, "The Drunkard's Walk", 2008)

“There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.” (Albert Camus)

"In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature, but in men it is a vice." (Boethius)

“Nature is filled with tendencies and obstructions. Extremes beget limitations, even as a river by its own swiftness creates obstructions for itself.” (Robert G Ingersoll)

"No great thing comes without a curse" (Sophocles)

"All truth is a shadow except the last. But every truth is substance in its own place, though it be but shadow in another place. And the shadow is a true shadow, as the substance is a true substance." (Isaac Pennington)

"There is no arithmetician like him who hath learned to number his days, and to apply his heart unto wisdom." (George Swinnock, "The Epistle Dedicatory", 1868)

"The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it." (Eric Hoffer, "The Passionate State of Mind", 1955)

"A man can only rise, conquer, and achieve by lifting up his thoughts. He can only remain weak, and abject, and miserable by refusing to lift up his thoughts." (James Allen, "As a Man Thinketh", 1903)

Week 2018-21

[#thought, #belief]
"What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are." (Anthony Robbins, "Awaken the Giant Within")

[#identity, #quest]
"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." (William James, "The Principles of Psychology")

[#limits, #imagination]
"To realize one's limitations marks the awakening of intellectual integrity, without which imagination, integrity and assiduity are barren." (Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin)

[#thought, #happiness]
"All that we are is made up of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speak or act with a pure thought, happiness will follow him, like a shadow that never leaves him." (Dhammapada)

[#human nature, #extremes]
"People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences." (Richard Thompson)

[#truth, #meaning]
"Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning." (Anais Nin)

[#quest, #introspection]
“The nature of creation is that you have to go inside and dig out. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it’s a painful, difficult search within.” (Louise Nevelson)

[#emotions, #problem_solving]
"Emotions are far harder things to understand than algebra and geometry, yet we spend hours in elucidating mathematics and expect such a problem as that of human relationships to solve itself." (Frances G Wickes)

[#life, #perseverance]
"Life is not easy for any of us, but what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted in something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained." (Marie Curie)

[#time, #potential]
"The past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities." (Stephen Hawking)

Week 2017-44

"The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational." (A. N. Wilson)

"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." (G. M. Trevelyan)

"Some people study all their life, and at their death have learned everything but to think." (Demergu Dewar)

"A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it." (Rabindranath Tagore)

"The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas." (George Santayana)

"An educated mind is useless without a focused will, and dangerous without a loving heart." (Winfried Deijmann)

"A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it." (Arthur Conan Doyle)

"Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost." (Khalil Gibran)

"Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck." (Frank Herbert)

"One of the great dreams of man must be to find some place between the extremes of nature and civilization where it is possible to live without regret." (Barry Lopez)

Week 2017-41

"Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time." (Rabindranath Tagore)

"The knowledge which lies behind is our natural help to that which lies before." (Peter M Latham)

"Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn’t believing. It’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed any more." (Terry Pratchett)

"Knowing what you know, be serene also, like a mountain; and do not be distressed by misfortune. Knowledge without serenity is an unlit candle; together they are honey-comb; honey without wax is a noble thing; wax without honey is only fit for burning." (Hakim Sanai)

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." (Philip K. Dick)

"The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give." (Philip K. Dick)

"Search a beautiful heart, not a beautiful face. Beautiful things are not always good, but good things are always beautiful." (Sufi saying)

"Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and being comfortable with not knowing." (Eckhart Tolle)

"A vocabulary of truth and simplicity will be of service throughout your life." (Winston Churchill)

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." (Albert Einstein)

Week 2017-23

[#reality, #illusion]
"The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it." (Chuck Palahniuk)

[#meaning]
"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human." (Viktor E. Frankl)

[#wisdom, #doubt]
"The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth." (Pierre Abélard)

[#knowledge, #wisdom]
"Don't be conceited about your own knowledge. Take advice from the ignorant as well as the wise, since there is no single person who embodies perfection nor any craftsman who has reached the limits of excellence. The perfect word is as rare as an emerald, yet it may be found among the maidservants working at the millstone." (Ptah-hotep)

[#limits, #belief]
"When a man is denied the right to live the life he believes in, he has no choice but to become an outlaw." (Nelson Mandela)

[#knowledge, #mystery]
"Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge." (Kahlil Gibran)

[#love, #identity]
"The things that we love tell us what we are." (Thomas Aquinas)

[#quest, #learning]
"I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul." (Rumi)

[#beauty, #fragility]
"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed." (Ernest Hemingway)

[#patience, #trust]
"Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn." (Rumi)


[#understanding, #discrimination]
"Those who judge will never understand, and those who understand will never judge." (Wilson Kanadi)

Week 2017-21

"We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." (Ayn Rand)

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it." (Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird)

"When you step beyond your own gate, you face a million enemies." (Gichin Funakoshi)

"When you resist the flow of life, what you are actually resisting is your own inner nature, for everything that happens to us is a reflection of who we are. This isn’t a mystical statement; it is part of the apparatus of perception. To perceive is to grasp the meaning of something." (Deepak Chopra)

"Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear and you will realize the unity of all things." (Dōgen)

"What we perceive and what we understand depends upon what we are." (Aldous Huxley)

"The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it." (John Locke)

"In the life cycle of every conflict, there is a point when it’s large enough to be recognized, but small enough to be resolved." (Daniel Dana)

"Love is a natural kind of meditation. And meditation is a supernatural kind of love." (Osho)

"When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about." (Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore)

Week 2017-13

[#success, #learning]
"The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well." (Horace Walpole)

[#action, #chance]
"Don't wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great." (Orison Swett Marden)

[#strength, #will]
"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will." (Gandhi)

[#errors]
"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes." (Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray")

[#limits, #chance]
"It is by fighting the limitations, temptations, and failures of the world that we reach our highest possibilities." (Helen Keller)

[#truth, #quest]
"Don’t keep searching for truth. Just let go of your opinions." (Seng Ts'an)

[#acceptance]
"We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us." (Friedrich Nietzsche)

[#altruism, #meaning]
"Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself." (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

[#limits, #human nature]
"The greatest enemy of the individual is the individual himself." (Saul Alinsky)