Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

Saving the world happens one person at a time. Be at the front of the queue. Each one of us has to work hard to achieve our collective dream for a healthier planet.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.

There is no public out there who needs to change. It's each one of us.

The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day; a movement is only people moving.

We must learn this rule, which is true alike of rich and poor — that no man and no class of men ever rise to any permanent improvement in their condition of body or of mind except by relying upon their own personal efforts. The wealth with which the rich man is surrounded is constantly tempting him to forget the truth, ad you see in family after family men degenerating from the position of their fathers because they live sluggishly and enjoy what has been placed before them without appealing to their own exertions. The poor man, especially in these days, may have a similar temptation offered to him by legislation, but this same inexorable rule will work.

Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world some day remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day.

We are the change we're waiting for.

There is much good work to be done by every one of us and we must begin to do it.

You can't do anything unless you do it yourself. And usually you can't do it yourself very well.

None of us alone can save the nation or the world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so. (p. 109)

I think it's incumbent upon me to try to be smart and make good choices and work with good people and work my ass off when I'm working with good people and I have to let everyone have their opinion afterwards. But this is what happens. You make a movie or you're on a show and then you have this experience and everyone tells you what you did. They tell you what you did. That's allowed. That's the experience of being human and subjectivity. That's it. We can only do what we'll do, and I can only do the best I can do.

When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess. We're not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives.

The most difficult matter is not so much to change the world as yourself.

Don't ask the world to change....you change first.

We are the makers of our own state and...individuals who realize the fact need not, ought not, to wait for collective action.

To grumble about the world and its unhappiness is always easier than to beat one's breast and groan over oneself.

The future was in our own hands. If we wanted a world where such things were possible, it was for us to make it.

The world meets nobody half way.

Let's not hate ourselves. We are all we have. We cannot change anything until we accept that. I cannot do this alone. I don't love myself enough to do it alone, but I can do it if we have a pact, if I am keeping up my end of the bargain. I have been a longtime perpetrator of hate crimes against myself, and I am turning myself in. I have had enough.

You must take action yourself, for Buddhas only teach the way.

As individuals, I just think that our biggest responsibility is to be self-aware, and some of us are not.

You have to rely on yourself and your associates - gifts don't come from above; you're going to win them, or you won't have them.

So much depends upon our willingness to make up our minds, collectively and individually, that present levels of performance are not acceptable, either to ourselves or to the Lord. In saying that, I am not calling for flashy, temporary differences in our performance levels, but a quiet resolve to do a better job, to lengthen our stride.

Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills... Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man