Quotes About Purpose

procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation.

Dostoevski said once, There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

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 life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

Es esta libertad espiritual, que no se nos puede arrebatar, lo que hace que la vida tenga sentido y propósito

Don't aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.

Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.

Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something!

man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked—and behold, duty was joy.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

El sufrimiento, en cierto modo, deja de ser sufrimiento cuando encuentra un sentido...».

There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive.

Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

What a man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

When man can't find meaning in his life, he distracts himself with pleasure.

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.

Meaning must be found and cannot be given.

The truth-that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which one man aspire. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

En última instancia, vivir significa asumir la responsabilidad de encontrar la respuesta correcta a las cuestiones que la existencia nos plantea, cumplir con las obligaciones que la vida nos asigna a cada uno en cada instante particular.

A human being should never become a means to an end.

Whether a life is fulfilled does not depend on how great one's radius of action is, but rather only on whether the circle is fully filled out.

If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever. [...] But in the face of death as absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities, we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not letting the singular opportunities - whose finite sum constitutes the whole of life - pass by unused.

Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy.