Viktor E. Frankl Goal Quotations

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

Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.

Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.

A man who could not see the end of his"provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.

Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.

[Speaking of his experience in a concentration camp:] As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal...Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.

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... Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.