I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Fear may come true that which one is afraid of.
Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self’s actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.
I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
The struggle for existence is a struggle ‘for’ something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.
One can choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces.
Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.
Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation.
Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.
Our attitude towards what has happened to us in life is the important thing to recognize. Once hopeless, my life is now hope-full, but it did not happen overnight. The last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, is to choose one’s own way.
It said to me, ‘I am here – I am here – I am life, eternal life.’
You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me – and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!
Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
No one can take from us the ability to choose our attitudes toward the circumstances in which we find ourselves. This is the last of human freedoms.
No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.