This is a curated selection of Viktor Frankl quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Viktor Frankl’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Meaninglessness Quotes
- Meaning Quotes
- Survival & Ways to Meaning Quotes
- Choice & Responsibility Quotes
- Happiness, Success, & Self-Actualization Quotes
25 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
“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
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
“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
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
“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
Viktor Frankl Quotes on Choice & Responsibility
“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
“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
“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
Viktor Frankl Quotes on Happiness, Success, & Self-Actualization
“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
“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
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