A Quote by Erich Fromm

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.

Erich Fromm

Quote Topics

Power Except Gives His Life Man Meaning Powers Unfolding

Quote Author

Erich Fromm
American - Psychologist
March 23, 1900 - March 18, 1980

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The way of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning--the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life--a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.

Jed Rubenfeld

If he wants meaning-the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life-a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain.

Jed Rubenfeld

The only way I can experience my life as meaningless is to work as hard as I possibly can to tell myself it has no meaning. At a deeper level of reality, my life can't help but have meaning, because everything is continually unfolding, and I am connected into that unfolding in ways that I can't even imagine.

Joseph Jaworski

Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

Viktor E. Frankl

The span of a man's life - that is nothing. But what a man makes of that span - that is something. A man must make his own meaning for life. Meaning is not automatically given to life.

Chaim Potok

A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

Chaim Potok

When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wises man. 'O, great sage,' he says, 'tell me the meaning of life.' The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, 'Do you have any other questions, my son?' Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, 'You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?'

Robert Breault

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.

Chaim Potok

Death is not necessarily what gives meaning to life LIFE gives meaning to life, and what we do with life, which is to create knowledge like music, art, science To this end, I believe intelligent life might be evolution's secret weapon: the ultimate hack that might help us transcend entropy.

Jason Silva

To feel the meaning of what one is doing, and to rejoice in that meaning; to unite in one concurrent fact the unfolding of the inner life and the ordered development of material conditions--that is art.

John Dewey

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

Viktor E. Frankl

As soon as you look at the world through an ideology you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that. That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life. But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made . Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.

Anthony de Mello

Life gives meaning to life. The answer to the meaning of life is hidden right there inside the question.

Wendy Mass

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

Joseph Campbell

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. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal

Viktor E. Frankl

Man is a goal-seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.