About
‘Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is a vivid account of one man’s experience as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. The book emphasizes love, hope, responsibility, inner freedom, and the beauty found in both nature and art as means of enduring and overcoming traumatic experiences. As previously stated, before being arrested and imprisoned by the Nazis, Frankl had begun developing meaning therapy (Logotherapy). As a result, he was able to use his theory to help himself and other prisoners in a psychogenic manner, as Frankl describes (“psychohygiene” is a term Frankl uses to describe the prevention of mental disease through the application of clear thought processes—that is, through the application of Logotherapy).
Notable quotes
- “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
- “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
- “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, 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. 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. 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 about it”
- “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
- “But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
- “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
- “Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. 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, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”
- “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life, he can only respond by being responsible.”
- “In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
- “So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
- “No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.”
- “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 – is that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. 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.”
- “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. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. 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.”
- “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
- “To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.”
- “I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one.”
- “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.”
- “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”.”
- “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”