Meaninglessness Quotes - Page 2

• The vitality that can stand the abyss of meaninglessness is aware of a hidden meaning within the destruction of meaning.

  Paul Tillich

  Vitality, Destruction, Abyss

  Paul Tillich, F. Forrester Church (1999). “The Essential Tillich”, p.183, University of Chicago Press

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• Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.

  Errol Morris

  Confrontation, Absurdity, Ecstatic

  Interview With Werner Herzog, www.believermag.com. March/April 2008.

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• Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge.

  Paul Tillich

  Doubt, Tools

  Paul Tillich (1968). “The Courage To Be”

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• I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.

  Corazon Aquino

  Life, Death, Wise

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• I am absolutely convinced that meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of meaning with our pantries still full.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Pain, Doe, Pleasure

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• Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Futility Of Life, Lady Macbeth

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 16

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• One can forget the meaninglessness of his own existence by occupying himself with scientific experiments of dubious import. Countless scientists and scholars spend their lives in the search of truths that are irrelevant to them.

  John Silber

  Life, Dubious, Forget

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• What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Men, Bears, Philosopher

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.118, Beacon Press

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• You wear nice clothes, you seek respect, you make a lot of money, but what's the point? It's all pointless. Of course, this kind of meaninglessness might suit this crappy nation. But, you see, we still have emotions like joy and happiness, right? They may not mount to much. But they fill up our emptiness. That's the only explanation I have.

  Koushun Takami

  Nice, Clothes, Joy

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• It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Hurt, Pain, Dark

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Just to say "Well, God is dead" in one breath is to say, in another, that nothing means anything. This is the moment of nihilism. Nihilism is the affirmation of meaninglessness.

  Simon Critchley

  Mean, Nihilism, Affirmation

  "Nihilism, punk and the international necronautical society: an interview with simon critchley". Interview with Steven Fowler, www.3ammagazine.com. March 30, 2009.

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• The point is that only one thing matters in this world, to prepare oneself for death. One can try to be as comfortable as possible until one dies... Because being comfortable does not have any meaning either. It just does not. Everything is only a big meaninglessness that one must bear.

  Odd Nerdrum

  Trying, Doe, World

  Source: sturm-lie.be

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• God alone can deliver us from a life of meaningless activities.

  T. B. Joshua

  Activity, Meaningless

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• I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.

  William Saroyan

  Writing, Ill Health, Despair

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• Until we see love as the meaning of life, life seems to have no meaning at all. The sense of meaninglessness produces chaos, and the chaos produces fear. There is only one way out of this, and that is to see every moment and every situation as an invitation to love.

  Marianne Williamson

  Meaning Of Life, Way, Chaos

  FaceBook post by Marianne Williamson from May 26, 2013

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• The greatest damage done by advertising is precisely that it incessantly demonstrates the prostitution of men and women who lend their intellects, their voices, their artistic skills to purposes in which they themselves do not believe, and that it teaches [in the words of Leo Marx] 'the essential meaninglessness of all creations of the mind: words, images, and ideas.'

  Paul Baran

  Believe, Men, Skills

  "The Commercial Tidal Wave" by Robert W. McChesney & John Bellamy Foster in "Monthly Review", March 2003.

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• [Vanity] is an unrecognised form of stupidity, you have to forget the cosmic meaninglessness of all our acts to be able to be vain and that's a glaring form of stupidity.

  Pascal Mercier

  Vanity, Stupidity, Able

  Pascal Mercier (2009). “Night Train To Lisbon”, p.80, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

  Tao Lin

  Mistake, Loneliness, Long

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• It's not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It's in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?

  Scarlett Thomas

  Meaningful, Way, Normal

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• Unrestrained automobility, hedonism, individualism, and conspicuous consumption cannot be sustained because they take more than they give back. A spiritually impoverished world cannot be sustained because meaninglessness, anomie, and despair will corrode the desire to be sustained and the belief that humanity is worth sustaining. But these are the very things that distinguish the modern age from its predecessors, Genuine sustainability, in other words, will come not from superficial changes but from a deeper process akin to humankind growing up to a fuller stature.

  David W. Orr

  Growing Up, Giving, Humanity

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• Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Character, Water, Modern Life

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations”, p.49, Melville House

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• The power of our Muse lies in her meaninglessness. Even the style can turn one into a slave if one does not run away from it, and then one is doomed to repeat oneself.

  Gueorgui Pinkhassov

  Running, Lying, Style

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• The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything.

  Carl Jung

  Spring, Fullness Of Life, Views

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• Nobody wants to have meaninglessness in their lives. You probably see a lot of people living their lives that don't have a whole lot of meaning that you can perceive, and you don't want that for yourself.

  Rush Limbaugh

  People, Want, Perceive

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• I think there will be a reaction - a reaction will set in against this communal dissociation. You know, man doesn't stand forever, his nullification. Once, there will be a reaction, and I see it setting in, you know, when I think of my patients, they all seek their own existence and to assure their existence against that complete atomization into nothingness or into meaninglessness. Man cannot stand a meaningless life.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Thinking, Forever

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