Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
A sound philosophy of life, I think, may be the most valuable asset for a psychiatrist to have when he is treating a patient.
Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
Success, like happiness, is the unexpected side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Each of us carries a unique spark of the divine, and each of us is also an inseparable part of the web of life.
The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.
Even when it is not fully attained, we become better by striving for a higher goal.
If we take a man as he is, we make him worse, but if we take man as he should be we make him capable of becoming what he can be.
Happiness cannot be attained by wanting to be happy - it must come as the unintended consequence of working for a goal greater than oneself.
The last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
I never would have made it if I could not have laughed. It lifted me momentarily out of this horrible situation, just enough to make it livable.
Suffering presents us with a challenge: to find our goals and purpose in our lives that make even the worst situation worth living through.
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
It is this spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with a chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
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.
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.
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.
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future.
Life requires of man spiritual elasticity, so that he may temper his efforts to the chances that are offered.
The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.
At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.
Nothing is likely to help a person overcome or endure troubles than the consciousness of having a task in life.
Man can only find meaning for his existence in something outside himself.
For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
