# Quote — Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

> Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run — in the long run, I say — success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it.

- Author: [Viktor Frankl](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl.md)
- Book: [Man's Search for Meaning](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning.md)
- Page: 16
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Man's_Search_for_Meaning#Quotes) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/dont-aim-at-success

## More from this book

> Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/our-generation-is-realistic.md)

> There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.

p. 126 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/there-is-nothing.md)

> Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/viktor-frankl/mans-search-for-meaning/love-is-the.md)