Quotes About Purpose

There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are "nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations." But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my "defense mechanisms," nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my "reaction formations.

meaning is possible in spite of suffering.

Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life

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

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.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.

I mentioned earlier how everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one's closest friends alive lost its value.

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.

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

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete

the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

homeostasis»: un estado sin tensiones, en equilibrio biológico interno. Lo que el hombre necesita no es vivir sin tensión, sino esforzarse y luchar por una meta que merezca la pena.

todos los aspectos de la vida son significativos; también el sufrimiento. Si hay un sentido en la vida, entonces debe haber un sentido en el sufrimiento.

one of his key ideas: 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.

Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'." ? Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Hay cosas que pueden hacerte perder la razón, a no ser que no tengas ninguna razón que perder».

It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning.

let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning.

For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's 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:

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth.

How is the existential vacuum to be explained? Unlike the animal, man is no longer told by his instincts as to what he must do. And in contrast to former times, he is no longer told by traditions and values what he should do. Now, knowing neither what he must do nor what he should do, he sometimes does not even know what it is that he basically wishes to do. Instead, he gets to wish to do what other people do (conformity) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.

As logotherapy teaches, there are three main avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love.

a mí me angustiaba otra cuestión: todo este sufrimiento, todas esas muertes, ¿tienen un sentido? —pues, de no ser así, tampoco tendría sentido sobrevivir a la estancia en el Lager—. Una vida que consistiera solo en salvarse o perecer, cuyo sentido dependiera del azar de las miles de arbitrariedades que conforman la vida en un campo de concentración, no merecería ser vivida.