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Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.

Viktor E. Frankl

Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy – it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Consequences Goal Psychology Unintended
Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Detect Gains Men Pain
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Art Develop Humorous Light
Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Country Fate Inspirational People Victim
The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Attitude Grateful Gratitude
It is the pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Happiness Pursuit Thwart
Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Believe Liberty Mean
Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Love Men Secret
A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Limits Men Self Ultimately
It said to me, ‘I am here — I am here — I am life, eternal life.’
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Eternal Life Said
But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Frank Image Mind Real Wife
It is well known that humor, more than anything else in the human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Above Altering Known Life Rise Well
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Causes Dedication Happiness
I do the unpleasant tasks before I do the pleasant ones.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

One Pleasant Tasks
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning in life in a general way.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Life Meaning Men Tasks
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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Believe Greatest Quests Task Taught

Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.

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Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.

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