Man's Search for Meaning

"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."

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

"No group better illustrates the drift toward this ocean—a current powerful enough to carry off even intelligent men—than the group of the so-called 'prominent' prisoners."

"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed."

"A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who loves him, or toward any human being whose fate depends upon him, can never lose his sense of life's meaningfulness."

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

"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."

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

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

"Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue."

"What is to give light must endure burning."

"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, is bound by that very consciousness."

"The last of human freedoms is to choose one's attitude."

"Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones."

"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning."

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

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

"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."

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

"The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected."

"By the unfree choice of their own attitudes they may nevertheless have been free, not entirely dependent on the biological, psychological and sociological conditions."

"Man's search for meaning is a primary force in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives."

"A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellow men, usually incomparably more than he has contributed to them."

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who gave away their last piece of bread."

"The will to meaning is even more fundamental than the will to pleasure or will to power."

"It is a fact that among those who suffered in concentration camps, an unusual number had the most peculiar dreams."

"Man can find meaning in life, in spite of death and suffering."

"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future was doomed, with certainty some time in the next few days."

"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."

"Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him."