Meaningless Quotes - Page 27

• The appearances of natural objects are in themselves meaningless; the essential thing is feeling - in itself and completely independent of the context in which it has been evoked.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Independent, Feelings, Essentials

  'Artists on Art; from the 14th - 20th centuries', ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 451, 1927.

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• The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like a giving hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

  Eric Hoffer

  Self Esteem, Humility, Hands

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• We need better things, not more. We should not pollute the world with meaningless, unused things when we can make and support things of rare and precious beauty.

  Daphne Guinness

  Support, Needs, World

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• Ten minutes are not just one-sixth of your hourly pay; ten minutes is a piece of yourself. Divide yourself into ten units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activities. Most things still remain to be done.

  Ingvar Kamprad

  Sacrifice, Done, Pieces

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• How small we humans are. All our scrambling around, trying to buttress ourselves against death. All our efforts to insulate ourselves against uncertainty with codes of behavior and meaningless busyness.

  Nancy Horan

  Effort, Trying, Behavior

  Nancy Horan (2012). “Loving Frank (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition): A Novel”, p.174, Ballantine Books

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• At birth man is offered only one choice --the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless.

  Jean-Pierre Melville

  Death, Men, Choices

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• We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

  Carl Sagan

  Ocean, Self, Years

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 1: "The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean", 1990.

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• If we can't make and keep commitments to ourselves as well as to others, our commitments become meaningless.

  Stephen Covey

  Commitment, Wells, Ifs

  Stephen R. Covey (1992). “Principle Centered Leadership”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

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• People's creativity is very much alive, but when they get paid for their creativity, they often experience that as rather meaningless. Money as the reward for their creative process is very one-dimensional, a tremendous comedown.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Creativity, People, Creative

  Chogyam Trungpa (2011). “Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness”, p.155, Shambhala Publications

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• I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.

  Roger Ebert

  Prayer, Flower, Smell

  Roger Ebert (2011). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012”, p.713, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt.

  Leslie Stephen

  Thinking, People, Doubt

  The Fortnightly Review, vol. 34, p. 177, 1880.

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• Virtue is not a chemical product...it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key.

  Lewis Mumford

  Mean, Keys, Literature

  "Values for Survival". Essay by Lewis Mumford, 1946.

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• When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day actually does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement.

  Lewis Mumford

  Art, Times Like These, Voice

  Lewis Mumford (2000). “Art and Technics”, p.21, Columbia University Press

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• I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.

  Sissela Bok

  Running, Believe, Government

  Sissela Bok (2011). “Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation”, p.179, Vintage

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• What meaning has such meditation? There is no meaning; there is no utility. But in that meditation there is a movement of great ecstasy which is not to be confounded with pleasure. It is this ecstasy which gives to the eye, to the brain and to the heart, the quality of innocency. Without seeing life as something totally new, it is a routine, a boredom, a meaningless affair. So meditation is of the greatest importance. It opens the door to the incalculable, to the measureless.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Heart, Eye, Doors

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• People have nothing to say, but they are afraid of saying nothing, so what they do say comes out flat and vapid and meaningless. The shadow of death is on every face.

  William S. Burroughs

  Shadow Of Death, People, Saying Nothing

  William S. Burroughs (1988). “The Western Lands”, Penguin Group USA

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• You would like to read, but somehow the rain gets into the book, too; not literally, and yet it really does, the letters are meaningless, and all you hear is the rain. You would like to play the piano, but the rain comes to sit alongside and play an accompaniment. And then the dry weather returns, which is to say there is steam and bright light. People age quickly.

  Sándor Márai

  Rain, Book, Light

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• When I compare life to a dream I do not mean to denigrate it as some sort of meaningless fantasy. Life is too wonderful to be called an "illusion" unless we whisper the word in amazement, as we might when witnessing the most astonishing magic trick. What could be more magnificent than this glorious universe, in all its multifarious extravagance? Its awesome vastness and delicate detail. Its impersonal precision and intimate intensity. Its harsh necessities and lush sensuality. This dream of life is truly marvelous.

  Timothy Freke

  Dream, Mean, Gnosis

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• Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at lest one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: you send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you.

  Deepak Chopra

  Meaningful, Spiritual, People

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• Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things?

  Rob Brezsny

  Secret, Treasure, Why Not

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• When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Compassion, Names, Voice

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1955). “Insecurity of Freedom”, p.4, Macmillan

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• If minds are wholly dependent on brains and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

  C. S. Lewis

  Running, Should Have, Wind

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.229, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• People are always making a fuss over my $15-20-million salaries. Believe me, the amount is meaningless once my wife, Maria, finds out about it. She's already spent half of my salary from Terminator 7!

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Believe, People, Wife

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• That soul-destroying, meaningless, mechanical, moronic work is an insult to human nature which must necessarily and inevitably produce either escapism or aggression, and that no amount of 'bread and circuses' can compensate for the damage done-these are facts which are neither denied nor acknowledged but are met with an unbreakable conspiracy of silence-because to deny them would be too obviously absurd and to acknowledge them would condemn the central preoccupation of modern society as a crime against humanity.

  E. F. Schumacher

  Silence, Soul, Humanity

  E.F. Schumacher (1975). “Small is Beautiful”

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• There's no such thing as a meaningless, worthless, or stupid dream.

  Miyavi

  Dream, Stupid, Worthless

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