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What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

— Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

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More quotes by Viktor Frankl

You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints."

Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

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.

Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

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

Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.

Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity — even under the most difficult circumstances — to add a deeper meaning to his life.

Man's Search for Meaning (1946)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Viktor Frankl (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.