Viktor E. Frankl Quotes

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.

Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

Getting ahead cannot be the only motive that motivates people. You have to imagine what a good life is.

The reality is that every human being is placed on this planet, and one of the things that drives humans is their need for meaning, and if you can make every job meaningful, then you will guarantee that every job will be done to its highest level of excellence.

Real happiness comes from discovering a sense of importance in one's actions and in one's life.

I want everybody to find meaning in whatever they do. That's the only purpose to life, actually. Let that meaning be so strong that you can't not wake up every day and be like, "Yep, this is what I gotta do, let's keep it moving" and not be disgruntled about it, and start using other people as excuses for why you're not creating a better life for yourself.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

Life has meaning only if you do what is meaningful to you.

The 'still, small voice' of God never calls on me to be like another man. It appeals to me to rise to my full stature and fulfill the promise that sleeps within my being.

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

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.

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.

The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has a 'meaning'and each of us is unique.

The point of life is not to be married or single - it is to be. We are human beings, or humans being. It does not matter so much what lifestyle we choose - it's what we make of the opportunities to grow, that counts.

I've never been motivated by the award thing. There's a certain thing that this fame thing does that makes my job harder, in a way. I'm still working with that. I don't think about it too much until somebody asks me a question, and then I think about it.

Most people feel best about themselves when they have given their very best.

Two weeks before his death, a friend asked him half jokingly if he had discovered any meaning in life. "Yes," he replied, "there is a meaning; at least, for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."

Everything you want to be, do or have comes from love.

If you believe in yourself you can make yourself whatever you want to be.

This, I believe, is the great Western truth: that each of us is a completely unique creature and that, if we are ever to give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfillment of our own potentialities, not someone else's.

There is only one person who can ever know exactly what you want and truly make you happy - that person is you!

if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.

Make sure that when you agree with everything that's being said and when you feel passionate about your future, you take it into your hands. You do something.