Viktor E. Frankl
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.Collection: Knowledge
Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.Collection: Brainy
Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.Collection: Life
Faith is trust in ultimate meaning.Collection: Trust
Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.Collection: Happiness
To 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.'Collection: Happiness
Religion is the search for ultimate meaning.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Space
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life, I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.Collection: Wisdom
In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.Collection: Positive
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.Collection: Attitude
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.Collection: Death
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.Collection: Fear
When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.Collection: Change
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.Collection: Men
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.Collection: Time
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'Collection: Work
Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
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.
For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
A human being is a deciding being.
Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.
The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.
When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.
A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.
Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.
Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.
No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
If you call 'religious' a man who believes in what I call a Supermeaning, a meaning so comprehensive that you can no longer grasp it, get hold of it in rational intellectual terminology, then one should feel free to call me religious, really.
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.Collection: Force
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.Collection: Tasks
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.Collection: Pleasure
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.Collection: Life
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.Collection: Wise
Decisions, not conditions, determine what a man is.Collection: Men
Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.Collection: Dedication
The one thing you can't take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me.Collection: Way
The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.Collection: Helping Others
Our greatest human freedom is that, despite whatever our physical situation is in life, WE ARE ALWAYS FREE TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS!Collection: Situation
We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation-just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer-we are challenged to change ourselves.Collection: Cancer
This is the core of the human spirit ... If we can find something to live for - if we can find some meaning to put at the center of our lives - even the worst kind of suffering becomes bearable.Collection: Suffering
When a man cannot find meaning, he numbs himself with pleasure.Collection: Men
Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.Collection: Motivational
Success is total self-acceptance.Collection: Acceptance
Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.Collection: Unique