Short answer
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” The sentence is almost always attributed to Viktor Frankl, but it does not appear in his books. The Viktor Frankl Institute lists it as an alleged quote, and Stephen Covey, who popularized it, said he read the idea in a library book whose author and title he did not note. The idea itself is much older. The Stoics called it the discipline of assent: an impression arrives, often with a jolt of feeling, and we decide whether to accept the judgment it carries. Epictetus told his students to say to a disturbing impression, in Long’s translation: “Wait for me a little, appearance; let me see who you are, and what you are about.” That pause is the space the modern line describes, and it can be trained.
Key takeaways
- The quote is widely attributed to Viktor Frankl, but it has not been found in his writings. The Viktor Frankl Institute calls it an alleged quote.
- Stephen Covey said he read the idea in a book in a library in Hawaii and did not record the source.
- The Stoic version: impressions arrive on their own, but assent, accepting what they say, is up to us.
- Natural first reactions (a start, a flush of anger) are not yet passions. The passion begins when we assent to the judgment behind them.
- The space can be widened with practice: naming the impression, delaying judgment, and asking what is actually known.
Who said it
The line circulates everywhere in this form: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” It is printed on posters, quoted in leadership books and nearly always credited to Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Nazi camps and wrote Man’s Search for Meaning.
The Viktor Frankl Institute in Vienna, which looks after his work, lists it among alleged quotes. According to the Institute, Stephen Covey found the passage in a library book, felt it expressed Frankl’s views, and did not write down the book’s author or title. Covey told the story in several places. He had been on sabbatical in Hawaii, was wandering among the shelves of a university library, opened a book and read a few sentences that made a deep impression on him. He later could not find the book again. Quote Investigator, which traces the history of famous quotations, reached the same conclusion: the words have not been located in Frankl’s work.
None of this makes the idea wrong. Frankl’s actual writing contains closely related thoughts, especially his argument that a person can be stripped of everything except the freedom to choose an attitude toward circumstances. But the clean, three sentence version is not his as far as anyone has been able to show, and it is worth saying so on a site that tries to put quotes back in their context. We do the same for many others in Stoic quotes the Stoics never said.
The Stoic version
The Stoics had a precise theory of what happens in that space. It was part of their logic, in the broad sense, and the foundation of what Epictetus called the discipline of assent.
It works in three steps.
- Impression. Something happens and presents itself to the mind: a sight, a sound, a message, a memory. The Stoics called this a phantasia, an impression or appearance. Impressions arrive whether we like it or not.
- The proposition inside it. Most impressions are not neutral. They come with a statement attached. Not just “my manager wrote ‘see me’”, but “my manager wrote ‘see me’, and something bad is about to happen”.
- Assent. We either accept the statement as true, reject it, or suspend judgment. This, the Stoics said, is up to us. Emotions in the strong sense, what they called passions, follow from assent. If I assent to “something bad is about to happen and it is terrible”, fear follows.
Epictetus puts it with his usual directness. In the Enchiridion, chapter 5: men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinions about those things. And in the Discourses he offers a method for the moment the impression arrives: do not be carried away by its vividness, but say, in Long’s words, “Wait for me a little, appearance; let me see who you are, and what you are about; let me put you to the test.”
First movements: the Stoics were not naive
A common objection is that this is unrealistic. You do not choose to feel your heart jump when a car swerves at you. The Stoics agreed.
Seneca, in On Anger, distinguishes first movements, involuntary reactions that even the wise person feels, from the passion proper, which requires the mind’s agreement. A sudden pallor, tears at bad news, a shiver at a cold wind: these happen to the body and are not yet emotions in the Stoic sense. Anger, he says, is something else. It begins when the mind approves the thought that a wrong has been done and revenge is due.
A later story, preserved by the Roman writer Aulus Gellius, makes the same point. A Stoic philosopher on a ship in a storm turned pale with fear, and a passenger mocked him. The philosopher explained, citing Epictetus, that the wise person’s mind is shaken by such impressions for a moment, but does not assent to them and does not add that they are truly terrible.
That is a realistic picture. The space between stimulus and response is not the absence of reaction. It is what happens after the first reaction, when we can still decide what to make of it.
Why the space matters
Most of what goes wrong in a day goes wrong in that space.
- An email arrives with a curt tone. The impression says: they are angry with me. We assent, and spend the afternoon defensive.
- A child slams a door. The impression says: they are disrespecting me. We assent, and respond to the disrespect instead of to the child.
- A plan falls through. The impression says: this always happens to me. We assent, and the setback becomes a story about our life.
In each case, the first impression may be partly right. The point is not to assume the opposite. It is to notice that a judgment has been added and to test it before acting on it. That alone changes much of what follows.
How to widen the space
The Stoics trained assent the way we might train a muscle, through repetition on small things. Practical methods that come from them, or are close to them:
- Name the impression as an impression. “This is an impression that he is ignoring me.” The phrasing creates distance. In the first chapter of the Enchiridion, Epictetus advises saying to every harsh appearance: “You are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be.”
- Separate fact and judgment. Write two columns, or say it aloud: what happened, and what I am telling myself about it.
- Ask what is actually known. Most painful judgments go beyond the evidence. What do I know, and what am I guessing?
- Delay. Seneca’s chief remedy for anger is delay. Let the first heat pass before deciding anything.
- Prepare in advance. Expecting difficulties, as Marcus Aurelius did each morning, means the impression arrives already examined. We cover this in premeditatio malorum.
The practical side of this is in how to stop reacting and start responding, and the theory in more depth in impressions and assent.
Where this connects to modern therapy
In the twentieth century, Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck, the founders of the two main schools of cognitive therapy, both cited Epictetus as an influence. Ellis’s model, in which an activating event is followed by a belief and then by a consequence, is almost a modern diagram of the Stoic theory of assent. This does not make Stoicism a therapy, or therapy a branch of Stoicism. But it means the Stoic account of that space has been tested, in a different form, by decades of clinical work. More in Stoicism and CBT.
Frequently asked questions
Who said "between stimulus and response there is a space"?
It is usually attributed to Viktor Frankl, but it has not been found in his writings, and the Viktor Frankl Institute lists it as an alleged quote. Stephen Covey popularized it and said he read the idea in a library book whose author he did not record.
What does "between stimulus and response there is a space" mean?
That between something happening and our reaction to it there is a moment in which we can choose how to respond, instead of reacting automatically.
What is the Stoic discipline of assent?
The practice, described by Epictetus, of examining impressions before accepting the judgments they carry. Impressions arrive on their own; accepting or rejecting what they say is up to us.
Did the Stoics believe we can control our emotions?
Partly. They accepted that first reactions, like a start of fear, are involuntary. But they held that full emotions such as rage or panic depend on our assent to a judgment, and that this assent can be trained.
Sources
- Viktor Frankl Institute, Alleged quote, accessed October 22, 2026
- Quote Investigator, Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Space, accessed October 22, 2026
- Epictetus, The Discourses and the Encheiridion, trans. George Long, Wikisource, accessed October 22, 2026
- Seneca, On Anger, Book 2.
- Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights, Book 19, chapter 1.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stoicism, accessed October 22, 2026