Jeroen van Lokven Psyche 4 nov 2020, 06:00

Leestijd: 4 minuten

De 20 meest inspirerende quotes van Auschwitz-gevangene en psychiater Viktor Frankl

In de Bedrock-serie ‘de mooiste quotes van’ delen we regelmatig inspirerende citaten van wijze mensen. Eerder kwamen Mathma Gandhi, Eckart Tolle en Jezus al aan bod en vandaag is het tijd voor Viktor Frankl. Een Oostenrijkse psychiater wie vooral bekend is geworden als overlever van de holocaust en grondlegger van de logotherapie.

In zijn boek Man’s search for meaning zegt Frankl dat hij in Auschwitz de kracht vond om te overleven. Hij wist dat hij zijn verschrikkelijke situatie niet kon veranderen; het enige dat hij kon veranderen was zijn manier van kijken naar de situatie.

In het kamp heeft hij een positieve draai aan de ellende gegeven door te kijken naar de toekomst. Met de gedachte later les te kunnen geven over het kampleven, heeft hij uiteindelijk het ballingschap kunnen accepteren.

Frankl wist aan het verschrikkelijke kampleven een positieve draai te geven. En dat vinden wij maar al te inspirerend.

De 20 mooiste quotes van Viktor Frankl

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

2. “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.”

3. “Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.”

4. “Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”

5. “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”

6. “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”

7. “So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”

8. “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”

9. “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 one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

10. “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.”

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11. “To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.”

12. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”

13. “I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”

14. “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

15. “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.”

16. “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment.”

17. “What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it.”

18. “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him will never be able to throw away his life.”

19. “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.”

20. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

Meer inspirerende quotes van inspirerende mensen:

• De 20 meest inspirerende quotes van Freud
• De 20 mooiste quotes van Carl Jung
• De 20 mooiste quotes van Malala Yousafzai