29 Inspirational Quotes from the Book Man’s Search for Meaning

We, who quest for meaning in life are not alone in this searching. There are psychologists, writers, thinkers, doctors and many others who asked themselves the same question: “What is the meaning of life?”

From all the sources I came across, one book Man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl stands out. It is the one a person should start with when looking for answers.

So let’s jump right into it and highlight the most inspirational quotes:

On Meaning of Life

“He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.” — Nietzsche

Frankl quotes Nietzsche and I believe this is the core thought of the book. If you have a reason to live you can overcome any obstacles and survive the tremendous amount of pain. If you don’t have anything to live for you may have piles of money, plenty friends, and relatives, but nothing that makes you feel fulfilled.

- Generally Speaking -

“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 life.”

Frankl believes that it is in human nature to search for a meaning more than anything else. Further, he also believed in

“..curing the soul by leading it to find meaning in life…”.

“…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.”

Frankl poses the question from a different angle — What does life expect from us? I wonder.

“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.”

The meaning of life is not something impalpable rather something very concrete that forms each individual.

“Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique”

To find a meaning in life is our primary motivation whether we realize it or not. The sooner we realize it the better. If we would accept that it is pleasure what drives us we would consider ourselves to be hedonists. But if we are hedonists why some of us try to improve themselves, help others, create something valuable? That doesn’t make any sense. Unless most of us are not hedonists.

..”this striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or, as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term “striving for superiority,” is focused.”

Viktor Frankl created a survey in which he asked his students what they consider to be very important to them with a range of possible answers. And the result?

“…what they considered “very important” to them now, 16 percent of the students checked “making a lot of money”; 78 percent said their first goal was “finding a purpose and meaning to my life.”

What you did in your life and with your life yesterday and 10 years ago is the strongest part of who you are.

“I should say having been is the surest kind of being……What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you”

But make no mistake. Looking for your purpose in life doesn’t necessarily bring you peace and quiet.

“man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health”

Those of us working 9–5 (myself included) suffer from Sunday neurosis, which he describes as being aware of the lack of content in our lives.

”that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.”

- Individually -

He does not theorize only in general but digs deeper into the meaning of life of each person as an individual.

“What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment….To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent.”

He concludes that there are three possible sources in which a person can find his or her meaning of life:

1. in creating a work or doing a deed
2. in experiencing something or someone
3. In suffering

“1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing 1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing….The second way of finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something — such as goodness, truth and beauty — by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness — by loving him.”

He also quotes Otto von Bismarck, which shows his never dying optimism.

“Bismarck could be applied: Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.”

Being happy is not directly correlated to finding a purpose in life. These two can live in a symbiosis as well as they can be mutually exclusive. It depends on the purpose and the way it is fulfilled.

“…our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy……..he is not only unhappy but also ashamed of being unhappy…”

On Freedom of Choice

Yes, it is hard to decide what to do with one’s life. Where to start? Is this really it? Yet, it is neither possible nor healthy to meditate about it endlessly. In one moment a man must decide.

“At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.”

Frankl analyzes the two types of peoples’ nature that are common and I must admit that I found myself in the latter. Are you in one as well?

“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).”

It’s all up to our decision how will we behave in everyday life as well as in crucial situations.

“They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.”

Frankl believed that no matter what happens to you it is always your choice how you will react and how you will behave in that particular situation. He believed this can form the person himself.

“the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone”

He believes that no group of people is either good or bad, but there are good and bad people everywhere.

“From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two — the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.”

Frankl thinks that fear is unnecessary and harmful:

“The fear is mother of the event….in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes…“paradoxical intention” on the twofold fact that fear brings about that which one is afraid of, and that hyper-intention makes impossible…his fear is replaced by a paradoxical wish. By this treatment, the wind is taken out of the sails of the anxiety.”

Well, we should try to get rid of our fears and anxieties. Easier said…

On existential vacuum:

“Every age has its own collective neurosis, and every age needs its own psychotherapy to cope with it. The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention.”

But, at the end of the day, it’s all our choice.

“..man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment….By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant” Albeit, very promising (and difficult): “Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.”

It’s hard to admit, but no external force or circumstance can influence us or change us if we don’t want to. It’s our choice.

“A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining….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.”

Yet:

“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….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.”

On Suffering

“An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces…But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.”

…and more on overcoming suffering:

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

Further, Frankl provides an example with a patient who suffered from the loss of his wife. Frankl explains that it is our relationship to the suffering that matters. Every suffering may have a well-grounded meaning. He asks his patient, who happens to be a doctor as well:

“What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doc- tor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.”

Yet, with the same breath he emphasizes:

“But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning”

Conclusion

There is a lot to learn from Viktor Frankl’s quotes, but I would finish with this advice of his:

“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!”