Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

I think the whole reason for my life is in there somewhere.

I'm not searching for the meaning of life, but I'm looking for a meaning within my life.

What is the value of your existence?

The pursuit of meaning, not happiness, is what makes life worthwhile.

Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.

The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?

Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little.

The goal of being alive is to figure out what it means to be alive.

What the meaning of human life may be I don't know: I incline to suspect that it has none.

People wonder why there seems to be no meaning in life. Meaning does not exist a priori. There is no meaning existing in life; one has to create it. Only if you create it will you discover it. It has to be invented first. It is not lying there like a rock, it has to be created like a song. It is not a thing, it is significance that you bring through your consciousness.

The purpose of life is to live it.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

If life is so meaningless, then why are we always bringing it up?

Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered; it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.

I am sustained by the certainty that life has meaning...as does death.

The meaning of life is that it is to be lived.

Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.

If man has been kicked up out of that which is only impersonal by chance , then those things that make him man-hope of purpose and significance, love, motions of morality and rationality, beauty and verbal communication-are ultimately unfulfillable and thus meaningless.

My life carries its own meaning in itself.

Live is meaningful only if you gave it a meaning.

It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.

Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

Do ask yourself why you, the individual, exist, and if you can get no other answer try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting before yourself an aim, a goal, a 'to this end', an exalted and noble 'to this end'.