Quotes About Purpose

As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.

Viktor E. Frankl

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.

This ultimate meaning necessarily exceeds and surpasses the finite intellectual capacities of man; in logotherapy, we speak in this context of a super-meaning. What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.

statement is an oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis.

Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence.

el hombre no debería cuestionarse sobre el sentido de la vida, sino comprender que la vida le interroga a él. En otras palabras, la vida pregunta por el hombre, cuestiona al hombre, y éste contesta de una única manera: respondiendo de su propia vida y con su propia vida.

the sudden awareness of afigure on a ground, whereas the perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation.

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.

way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

meaning can be found not only in work but also in love.

It was in the nature of this sacrifice that it should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the world of material success.

But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to be happy. Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically

must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what

We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly.

Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness

En todo momento el hombre debe decidir, para bien o para mal, cuál será el monumento de su existencia.

What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness

Tell me Master, what is the best move in the world?

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

I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy

The salvation of man is through love and in love. I

And how does a human being go about finding meaning? As Charlotte Bühler has stated: "All we can do is study the lives of people who seem to have found their answers to the questions of what ultimately human life is about as against those who have not."6