Quote
“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.”— Viktor E. Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning (1946) · Man's Search for Meaning →
Why it was said
Viktor Frankl wrote this from his years in the concentration camps, where he observed which prisoners kept some inner life and which did not. It is the observation the whole of Man's Search for Meaning is organised around.
What it actually means
Frankl is not saying circumstances do not matter; he had lost everything. He is saying that between what happens and how one responds there remains a space, and that in the most extreme conditions he could find, some people still used it. The sentence has become a comfort, but in the book it is a demand: the freedom to choose one's attitude is also the responsibility to.
How to use it
- 1In a situation you cannot change, write the one thing that is still yours to choose: what you attend to, how you treat the next person, what you make it mean.
- 2Notice the difference between what happened and the story you added, and choose the story deliberately.