6 Quotes & Sayings By Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was born in Vienna, Austria on April 13, 1905. In 1933, he earned his medical degree from the University of Vienna and practiced psychiatry until he was conscripted into the SS during World War II. During the course of the war, Dr. Frankl was imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp, where he filed a detailed report on the psychology of survival Read more

He published a classic study of the effects of long-term imprisonment, Man's Search for Meaning . In 1947, Dr. Frankl immigrated to the United States with his wife and three daughters.

He became a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis and later at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1967, Dr.

Frankl founded the Center for Logotherapy—a school of thought that synthesizes the findings from all major schools of psychotherapy into a unified vision of human existence as a search for meaning and purpose—and served as its director until 1973. He died on January 11, 1997.

1
The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl
2
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be what he will become in the next moment. Viktor Frankl
3
It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness. Viktor Frankl
4
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl
5
Sports allow men to build up situations of emergency. What he then demands of himself is unnecessary achievement - and unnecessary sacrifice. He artificially creates the tension that he has been spared by affluent society. Viktor Frankl