A > A's Quotes

“The last of the human freedoms: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity...”
― Victor Frankl, Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning

“At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism).”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“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.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“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.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
― Viktor Emil Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“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, Man's Search for Meaning

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“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.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“The only difference between a suicide and a martyrdom really is the amount of press coverage.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators then can build another world. Rubble, once achieved, makes further ruins' means irrelevant.

Away with our explosives, then!

Away with our destroyers! They have no place within our better world.
But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable.

Let's drink their health... then meet with them no more.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

“كل الكائنات تحب النزول ، وتبتهج له، إلا الإنسان الذي يخدعه وهمه وتحدوه أحلامه، فيبهجه الصعود والترقي.”
― يوسف زيدان, عزازيل

“تبدو قطرة الماء نقية شفافة كبللورة فإذا ما كبرتها العدسات ظهرت فيها آلاف الشوائب ، ويظل القمر جميلا صافيًا ما دام بعيدًا فإذا ما اقتربت بدا لك كشاطئ قذر مهجور. حتى وجه التي تحب ، بشرتها الغضة الوردية التي تأخذ قلبك ، ما إن تضاعف قدرتك على رؤيتها حتى تبدو لك كنسيج قبيح مجعد . في كل مرة تتأكد الحقيقة . ليس اعجابنا بالجمال إلا خداعا للنظر وكلما اتسعت الرؤية بانت التجاعيد”
― علاء الأسواني, نيران صديقة

“You realize that people take drugs because it's the only real personal adventure left to them in their time-constrained, law-and-order, property-lined world. It's only in drugs or death we'll see anything new, and death is just too controlling.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor

“عندما تتكاثر المصائب يمحو بعضها بعضاً ..
وتحل بك سعادة جنونية غريبة المذاق ..
وتستطيع أن تضحك من قلب لم يعد يعرف الخوف !”
― نجيب محفوظ

“في داخل كل مقموع يكمن طاغية صغير يتحين الفرصة لكي يمارس ولو لمرة واحدة الاستبداد الذى مورس عليه”
― علاء الأسواني, لماذا لا يثور المصريون؟

“People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“قد نضيق بالحبّ إذا وُجد، ولكن شَدَّ مانفتقده إذا ذهب.”
― نجيب محفوظ

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“Happiness is the most insidious prison of all.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“Eve: All this riot and uproar, V... is this Anarchy? Is this the Land of Do-As-You-Please?

V: No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means "without leaders", not "without order". With anarchy comes an age or ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order... this age of ordung will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course... This is not anarchy, Eve. This is chaos.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

“Much of magic as I understand it in the Western occult tradition is the search for the Self, with a capital S. This is understood as being the Great Work, as being the gold the alchemists sought, as being the Will, the Soul, the thing we have inside us that is behind the intellect, the body, the dreams. The inner dynamo of us, if you like. Now this is the single most important thing that we can ever attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet there are a frightening amount of people who seem to have the urge not just to ignore the Self, but actually seem to have the urge to obliterate themselves. This is horrific, but you can almost understand the desire to simply wipe out that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually posses such a thing as a soul, such a precious thing. What if you break it? What if you lose it? Mightn’t it be best to anesthetize it, to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure? I think that the way that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self and then having to maintain it.”
― Alan Moore

“You see, there's the way things seemed and then there's the way things were and one is so often the total reverse of the other.”
― Alan Moore, Lost Girls