Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

A human being is a deciding being.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.

The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. 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.

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

What is to give light must endure burning.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

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.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

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.'

A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist's role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

If there is a 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.

Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

Since Auschwitz, we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima, we know what is at stake.

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.

To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

When I was taken to the concentration camp of Auschwitz, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated. Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.

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

Being human always points and is directed to something or someone other than oneself be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.

One can choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances.

Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.

In times of crisis people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.

When we are no longer able to change the situation, we can always change ourselves.

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

Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.