Viktor Frankl

on’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 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 of it.”

The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.

himself with sex, although his frustrated emotions and his finer, higher feelings did find definite expression in them.

Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.

Several times in the course of the book, Frankl approvingly quotes the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.”

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.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.