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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

Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Envy Past Possibility Reality Suffering
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Change Happiness Life
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Challenges Life Meaning Men
I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Country Lectures Ministry Ultimately
Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Condemn Groups Kindness
If there is 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.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Death Fate Life Meaning Suffering
The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Keys Mental Health Quests
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Powerful Purpose Wise
Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Causes Dedication Sides
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Chaos Mans Meaning Response Search Stimulus
When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Change Inspirational Positive
A human being is a deciding being.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Choices Inspirational Thrive
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Goal Inspirational Life
Despair is suffering without meaning.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Despair Existential Suffering
The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Opportunity Suffering Unhappy
Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord’s Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
VIKTOR E. FRANKL

Generation Men Our Prayer

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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