A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'

In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.

When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.

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.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

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. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.

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.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is.

When we are no longer able to change a situation - just think of an incurable disease such as an inoperable cancer - we are challenged to change ourselves.

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

Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.

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

Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.

I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.

A human being is a deciding being.

Even a genius cannot completely resist his Zeitgeist, the spirit of his time.