5 POWERFUL AND INSPIRING LIFE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK, MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING.

VICTOR FRANKL

Any prominent person, whom I have had the privilege of listening to or whose book I have throughly enjoyed reading, has also read Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s search for meaning, at least once. Mr. Frankl dedicates the first part of his book to give a generous account of his horrific experience in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII.

A neurologist by profession, he dedicates the second part of the book to a theory he developed and called logotherapy. According to this theory, our primary motivational factor in life is to find meaning. And one of the three areas where we find meaning in life is through unavoidable suffering. Love and our vocation are the other two. In his book, man’s search for meaning, he advocated that instead of feeling shame in our sufferings or shaming others in theirs, we ought to stand in our sufferings with dignity because it opens up a path to finding meaning in life.

HERE ARE FIVE POWERFUL AND INSPIRING LIFE QUOTES FROM HIS BOOK, MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self determining. Man does not simply exists but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes—with the limits of endowment and environment—he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, 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.

Ironically enough, in the same way that fear brings to pass what one is afraid of, likewise a forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes.

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

Read a full review of the book, Man’s search for meaning HERE

Listen to an Episode of the STOIC-THE INVINCIBLE SOUL PODCAST inspired by this book HERE