Quotes About Meaning

If you ask for the true meaning of life and get a story in reply, know that this is the wrong answer. The exact details don't really matter. Any story is wrong, simply for being a story. The universe just does not work like a story.

Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the stronger the story becomes, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.

Más de un siglo después de que Nietzsche afirmara que Dios había muerto, parece que Dios ha vuelto.

If you told people in the Middle Ages that within a few centuries God will be dead, they would have been horrified. 'How can we live without God? Who will give life meaning and protect us from chaos?' Looking

As robots and AI push humans out of the job market, the ultra-Orthodox Jews may come to be seen as the model for the future rather than as a fossil from the past. Not that everyone will become Orthodox Jews and go to yeshivas to study the Talmud. But in the lives of all people, the quest for meaning and community might eclipse the quest for a job.

truth is a poor test for knowledge. The real test is utility.

All humanist sects believe that human experience is the supreme source of authority and meaning, yet they interpret human experience in different ways.

politicians.' It is much easier to live with the fantasy, because the fantasy gives meaning to the suffering. Priests discovered this principle thousands of years ago.

A wise old man was asked what he learned about the meaning of life. "Well," he answered, "I have learned that I am here on earth in order to help other people. What I still haven't figured out is why the other people are here.

Tal como lo planteaba Nietzsche, si uno tiene una razón por la que vivir, lo puede soportar casi todo.

In the language of the Dinka people of the Sudan, 'Dinka' simply means 'people'. People who are not Dinka are not people. The Dinka's bitter enemies are the Nuer. What does the word Nuer mean in Nuer language? It means 'original people'. Thousands of miles from the Sudan deserts, in the frozen ice-lands of Alaska and north-eastern Siberia, live the Yupiks. What does Yupik mean in Yupik language? It means 'real people'.3 In

We need only record and connect our experiences to the great data flow, and the algorithms will discover their meaning and tell us what to do.

So perhaps happiness is synchronising one's personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.

As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how. A

la vida moderna consiste en una búsqueda constante del poder en el seno de un universo desprovisto de sentido.

Unless you are happy to entrust the future of life to the mercy of quarterly revenue reports, you need a clear idea what life is all about.

Fiction isn't bad. It is vital.

Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.

The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power.

But evolution has no purpose.

Todos los relatos que nos dan sentido e identidad son ficticios,

This escape clause has been the salvation of modern society, for it is impossible to sustain order without meaning. The great political, artistic and religious project of modernity has been to find a meaning to life that is not rooted in some great cosmic plan. We are not actors in a divine drama, and nobody cares about us and our deeds, so nobody sets limits to our power – but we are still convinced our lives have meaning.

In the twenty-first century fiction might thereby become the most potent force on earth, surpassing even wayward asteroids and natural selection. Hence if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that give meaning to the world.

from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose.