Viktor Frankl

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

"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."

"Those who have a 'why' to live can bear with almost any 'how.'"

"Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Adler believed, but a quest for meaning."

"The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour."

"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness."

"Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life."

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response."

"The last of one's freedoms is to choose one's attitude under any circumstance."

"Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning."

"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering."

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."

"An active life serves the purpose of giving man a chance to find meaning in his work."

"Creative work is a way to find meaning in life."

"The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity."

"What matters is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."

"Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth."

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread."

"It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful."

"The prisoners who lost faith in the future were doomed."

"No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might have not done the same."

"A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who loves him, or toward any human being whose existence or destiny he makes his own."

"The consciousness of one's inner freedom is independent of external circumstances."

"Even the attempt to commit suicide may have a meaning."

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."

"The more one forgets himself by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human he is."

"A person who, for decades, had experienced such rich emotions, suffered so profoundly, will find that even his present life cannot compete."

"Everything depends on our attitude and the choice we make moment by moment."

"The experiences of camp life show that man does not disintegrate under stress of absolute hopelessness."

"Those who were religiously oriented were in general better equipped to resist the influences which would damage their moral stand."