Viktor Frankl

"We are called not to happiness, but to responsibility and meaning."

"The human capacity for hope is boundless when rooted in purpose."

"To live is to have meaning; to have meaning is to live fully."

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

"The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."

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

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

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

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

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

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one's attitude."

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

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

"Happiness ensues from meaning; it does not come from the pursuit of happiness itself."

"When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept suffering as his task."

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

"The freedom to decide your own attitude is the last freedom no one can take away."

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

"Responsibility is the more important counterpart to freedom."

"Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it."

"Success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it."

"The pursuit of meaning is what gives life purpose and direction."

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now."

"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others."

"A man can get used to anything, but in no case should he try to."

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

"Human kindness can reach across the barbed wire of hatred and despair."

"No one can take away our freedom to choose our thoughts and our attitude."

"In the concentration camps, we discovered that man has two faces, and I was not at all surprised by this."