# Quote — Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

> You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
>
> So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense:
>
> Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
>
> And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

- Author: [Viktor Frankl](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl.md)
- Book: [Man's Search for Meaning](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning#Postscript_1984_:_The_Case_for_a_Tragic_Optimism) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/you-may-of-course

## More from this book

> Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/our-generation-is-realistic.md)

> There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.

p. 126 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/there-is-nothing.md)

> Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/love-is-the.md)