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 E. FranklNo 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.
Viktor E. FranklTo the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
Viktor E. FranklI am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
Viktor E. Frankl