“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.”

— Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

About Viktor Frankl

1905 – 1997

Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor who founded logotherapy. His memoir 'Man's Search for Meaning' is one of the most widely read books in the world.

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More from Viktor Frankl

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude.”

— Viktor Frankl

Attribution note: Source disputed or unverified.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.”

— Viktor Frankl

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

— Viktor Frankl

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

— Socrates

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

— Epictetus

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

— Epictetus

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

— William Shakespeare

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

— Marcus Aurelius

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”

— Marcus Aurelius

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him.”

About Viktor Frankl

More from Viktor Frankl

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