Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.

Joy can only be real if people look upon their life as a service and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.

The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

In order to be successful in any undertaking, I think the main thing is for one to grow to the point where he completely forgets himself; that is, to lose himself in a great cause. In proportion as one loses himself in this way, in the same degree does he get the highest happiness out of his work.

Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

My research offers impressive evidence that we feel better when we attempt to make our world better...to have a purpose beyond one's self lends to existence a meaning and direction - the most important characteristic of high well-being.

When I see people that are my age and reaching 50, the ones that are really sparkly and full of joy are the ones that are committed to something bigger than themselves.

The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.

All of us are born for a reason, but all of us don't discover why. Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.

Real success is finding you lifework in the work that you love.

It took me a while and a lot of hard times to figure out my purpose, I am so happy with my life. I just want to help make other people happy, too.

Nothing in life is more exhilarating than fighting for something larger than you.

People who achieve the highest levels of success - whether in business or in raising families or simply in discovering fulfillment and satisfaction and purpose in life - are those who place their focus on other people rather than themselves.

Success is not just making money. Success is happiness. Success is fulfillment; it's the ability to give.

When it comes to anything you want to do in your life, you have to be passionate. Success may come, but in the end, the most important thing is that you are doing what you really want to do.

For me, it's beautiful when career and passion come together.

Success in life depends upon happiness, and happiness is found in no other way than through SERVICE that is rendered in a spirit of love.

There can never be success without happiness, and no man can be happy without dispensing happiness to others.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest.

We are all so preoccupied with ourselves. How can I get happy, how can I find the job I love, how can I become a millionaire, how can lose weight. Yet, the reality is that fulfillment, success and all of these good things comes from trying to help those that we care about to achieve those things.

Commit yourself to something bigger than yourself.

The laws of our being are such that we must perform some degree of use in the world, whether we intend it, or not; but we can deprive ourselves of its indwelling joy, by acting entirely from the love of self.

The root of joy, as of duty, is to put all one's powers towards some great end.

There is no greater satisfaction for a just and well-meaning person than the knowledge that he has devoted his best energies to the service of the good cause.