Man's Search for Meaning

"Our main motivation is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain, but to find a meaning in life"

"When facing suffering, ask not 'what do I want from life' but 'what does life want from me'"

"Despair is suffering without meaning"

"A man's main concern should not be the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of his own life at any given moment"

"Freedom of will is the last of the human freedoms—one which cannot be taken away"

"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 does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment"

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

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

"The prisoners who lost faith in the future—in their return—were usually the ones who died"

"Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself"

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

"An active life serves the purpose of giving man a chance to realize values in creative work"

"The greatest freedom is the freedom to choose one's attitude"

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

"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"

"The will to pleasure and the will to power are far less meaningful than the will to meaning."

"Our freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude, and this freedom is the basis of all human dignity."

"Meaning is something each person must define for themselves."

"The spiritual freedom cannot be taken away; it is always possible to preserve the core of one's self."

"When a person loses a sense of purpose, he loses everything."

"Meaning can be discovered in three ways: by what we give to life, by what we take from the world, and by the stance we take toward unavoidable suffering."

"Happiness is not something that can be pursued; it must ensue from having found meaning."

"The capacity to choose one's attitude is what makes us truly human."

"Even in a concentration camp, one's last inner freedom cannot be taken away."

"By declaring that man's search for meaning is the primary motivation, we are also declaring responsibility to be man's most human characteristic."

"Despair is suffering without meaning, but suffering can lose its despair when it has meaning."