Thread by @ResilienttHuman

21 Breathtaking Quotes from Man's Search for Meaning

(that will help you find your purpose and ease your suffering)

= THREAD =

What's the meaning of life?

You'd be hard-pressed to find a better candidate than Viktor E. Frankl to answer that.

He was a Jewish psychologist who survived Nazi concentration camps.

So here are 21 breathtaking quotes from his book Man's Search for Meaning:

** On the Necessity of a Purpose **

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

- Viktor E. Frankl

2. "No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism)."

3. "There are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money."

- Viktor E. Frankl

4. "Freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."

- Viktor E. Frankl

5. "A 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.”

** On Life Experience **

6. What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.

- Viktor E. Frankl

7. “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.”

8. "There is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that."

- Viktor E. Frankl

** On Suffering **

9. "Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it."

- Viktor E. Frankl

10. "When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task."

- Viktor E. Frankl

11. "When we are no longer able to change a situation— just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer —we are challenged to change ourselves."

- Viktor E. Frankl

** On Meaning of Life **

12. "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"

- Viktor E. Frankl

13. "Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

- Viktor E. Frankl

14. "Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. ... Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross."

- Viktor E. Frankl

15. "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."

- Viktor E. Frankl

16. "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."

- Viktor E. Frankl

** On Ethics **

17. "No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them."

- Viktor E. Frankl

** On the Dangers of Labelling **

18. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils.

19. "In the concentration camps, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions."

- Viktor E. Frankl

20. "How can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler’s language?”

In response, .... I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, “How can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?”

- Viktor E. Frankl

** On Love **

21. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities.

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