Quotes About Meaning

I don't know what God is, or what God had in mind when the universe was set in motion. In fact, I don't know if God even exists, although I confess that I sometimes find myself praying in times of great fear, or despair, or astonishment at a display of unexpected beauty.

Avant-garde is French for bullshit

Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there, when you're everywhere-come and get your share.

Look at me Who am I supposed to be? Look at me What am I supposed to be? Look at me Oh my love

And, hence, to manage it. For if, as Thucydides warned two thousand years earlier, words in crises can lose their meaning, leaving in the "ability to see all sides of a question [an] incapacity to act on any,"82

In ancient Greek the word 'idiot' meant anyone who wasn't a politician.

In Spanish, the word esposas means both 'wives' and 'handcuffs'.

Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo all mean 'capital' in their respective languages.

What is literally the most misused word in the English language? The word 'literally' has been used to mean its opposite for over 200 years.

Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet. ROBIN WILLIAMS

Our words have no inherent meaning to a corvid; they are arbitrary, but the natural communication system of these birds also involves arbitrary symbols (calls) that refer to specific objects and actions in their world.

He also found an essay written by William James titled "What Makes a Life Significant

If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

The authors of literary works may not have intended all the subtleties, complexities, undertones, and overtones that are attributed to them by critics and by students writing doctoral theses. That's what God says about geologists, I told him...

So oft in theologic wars, / The disputants, I ween, / Rail on in utter ignorance / Of what each other mean, / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen.

The experience taught me that the essence of a Cambridge education centers on two questions: What does it mean? How do you know?

As soon as you start asking what education is for, what the use of it is, you're abandoning the basic assumption of any true culture, that education is worth while for its own sake.

Students are taught how to do things, but many are not forced to reflect on why they should do them or what we are here for.

It is a greater work to educate a child in the true and larger sense of the word than to rule a state.

The antithesis between a technical and a liberal education is fallacious. There can be no adequate technical education which is not liberal and no liberal education which is not technical.

Great art is always a balancing act. But all art has both - an emotional content and an intellectual content.

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

True literature is more than just a story someone has told. It must provide the reader with the essence of the world on a moral, philosophical and emotional level.

The characters in a children's book must reach into the heart of the reader on page one. Emotional content is the main reason a child and a parent will go back to a book again and again.