Man's Search for Meaning

"Our main motivation is to find meaning in life."

"I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the West Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the East Coast."

"The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that he can take things easy now."

"The more abstract the threat to our survival becomes, so too does the answer we seek."

"Only by wading through the dark waters of despair can we ever hope to attain the bright shore of meaning."

"We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life and instead think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life."

"It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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