Quotes About Meaning

You need hope to form a thought. It takes—I don't know—optimism to speak, to engage in conversation. Because, really, what's the point of all this communicating? What difference does it really make what we say to each other?

You need hope to form a thought. It takes—I don't know—optimism to speak, to engage in conversation. Because, really, what's the point of all this communicating? What difference does it really make what we say to each other? Or what we do, for that matter?

It takes—I don't know—optimism to speak, to engage in conversation. Because, really, what's the point of all this communicating? What difference does it really make what we say to each other? Or what we do, for that matter?" "There's a name for that," she says. "It's called depression.

Though the language spoken here appears to be the same, the meaning of each word can be vastly different. What they mean when they say freedom. What they mean when they say equal. What they mean when they say fair.

And irony without humor is violence.

Nothing meaning the absence of tangible threats—no gun to her head, no knife to her throat—and yet what is poverty if not a threat? What is being called that word or followed down the street by packs of boys if not a threat?

His job is to communicate information and ideas, and how is he supposed to do that when language itself has become meaningless?

Albert Einstein, who once said, "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.

aesthetic isn't simply about good design for good design's sake.

The abolitionists study whiteness in order to abolish it—not to "reframe," or "redeem," or "deconstruct" it but to abolish it.

Some stories are your flowers. Others are your meat and bread. This story was neither flowers nor meat nor bread. It was extra, and it was impossible. It was their shared cursed inheritance.

Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void. - You've Got Mail

All we are, all we can be, are the stories we tell," he says, and he is talking as if he is talking only to me. "Long after we are gone, our words will be all that is left, and who is to say what really happened or even what reality is? Our stories, our fiction, our words will be as close to truth as can be. And no one can take that away from you.

Some people, like teachers and librarians and other adults, like to say that names are not important. Like sticks and stones. But they are wrong. Every word you choose means something you think it means, and more.

All we are, all we can be, are the stories we tell. Long after we are gone, our words will be all that is left, and who is to say what really happened or even what reality is? Our stories, our fiction, our words will be as close to truth as can be. And no one can take that away from you.

What is decisive is that, in his personal goals and wishes, in his sense of what had meaning and what did not, he anticipated the attitudes and feelings of a later type of artist. [...] In other words, Mozart represented the free artists who places his trust largely in individual inspiration.

And this fact again illustrates a major problem in Latour's formulation. If his article was meant to be a formal, or semiotic, reading of Einstein's text, it is not relevant to arbitrarily substitute words whose meanings are not justified by the text. Furthermore, the very premise of his "semiotic" reading of a text in translation begs the question of whether he is imputing meaning to the author or the translator.

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.

A dreidel is a four-sided top with a Hebrew letter on each side. The letters are Nun, Gimmel, Hay and Shin, which stand for the phrase "Nes Gadol Haya Sham," or "A Great Miracle Happened There." In Israel dreidels have the letters Nun, Gimmel, Hay and Peh, which stands for "A Great Miracle Happened Here.

Meaning is not in things but in-between them.

authoritarian institutions, such as governments and churches, do not use language but jargon, repetitive phrases that are not supposed to have meaning but merely enforce obedience. Language has its own internalizing ethic; it is individualistic and thus threatening to any monolithic system that demands a chorus or litany.

that a highly developed purpose and the will to live are among the prime raw materials of human existence. I became convinced that these materials may well represent the most potent force within human reach.

Not every illness can be overcome. But many people allow illness to disfigure their lives more than it should. They cave in needlessly. They ignore and weaken whatever powers they have for standing erect. There is always a margin within which life can be lived with meaning and even with a certain measure of joy, despite illness.

It would take many centuries before Christian preachers started to teach that when Christ said, 'Blessed are the poor for theirs in the Kingdom of Heaven,' he meant not just the poor in spirit (the pious), but the actual impoverished masses of people.