Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is true that we can see the therapist as a technician only if we have first viewed the patient as some sort of machine.
A sound philosophy of life, I think, may be the most valuable asset for a psychiatrist to have when he is treating a patient.
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.
A life of short duration...could be so rich in joy and love that it could contain more meaning than a life lasting eighty years.
If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.
Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.
Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!
We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: 1. by doing a deed; 2. by experiencing a value; and 3. by suffering.
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.
As such, I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.
Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
Once an individual's search for meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
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.
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.
I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.
Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
No one can take from us the ability to choose our attitudes toward the circumstances in which we find ourselves. This is the last of human freedoms.
The struggle for existence is a struggle 'for' something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.
Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.
The more one forgives himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.
As the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Ever more people have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.
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.
Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one's belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one's right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear anymore—except his God.
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude especially an attitude of gratitude in a given set of circumstances especially in difficult circumstances.
It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.
We dislike talking about our experiences. No explanations are needed for those who have been inside, and the others will understand neither how we felt then nor how we feel now.
...to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct.
As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.
Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
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.
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.
This is the core of the human spirit ... If we can find something to live for - if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives - even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.
For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
The transitoriness of our existence in now way makes it meaningless. But it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing the essentially transitory possibilities.
We cannot, after all, judge a biography by its length, by the number of pages in it; we must judge by the richness of the contents...Sometimes the 'unfinisheds' are among the most beautiful symphonies.
Logotherapy . . . considers man as a being whose main concern consists in fulfilling a meaning and in actualizing values, rather than in the mere gratification and satisfaction of drives and instincts.
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.