Quotes About Meaning

Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean. They speak different languages and use different powers of the brain.

The crucial differentiation between humans and all other animals is that we make meanings, and the name we give to collective systems of meanings is culture.

When everything is available, every lifestyle on offer, when all you have is freedom, but nothing to guide you in that freedom, "it's not so much that you lose the thread of the meaning of your life, you have trouble even staying focused on the question.

When you stop believing in God, there is no sudden explosion of light or darkness. The world continues on its accustomed course. The sky does not fall. The sun still shines. Life goes on. But something is lost nonetheless, something important that gives life connectedness, depth and a sense of purpose; that gives you a feeling of participating in something vast and consequential.

What the secularists forgot is that Homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal. If there is one thing the great institutions of the modern world do not do, it is to provide meaning.

Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? These are questions to which the answer is prescriptive not descriptive, substantive not procedural. The result is that the twenty-first century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.

Science does not yield meanings, nor does it prove the absence of meanings. The meaning of a system lies outside the system. Therefore the meaning of the universe lies outside the universe.

Homo sapiens, discovering God singular and alone, discovered the human being singular and alone. There is no greater dignity than that

S]ocial life cannot be reduced to a series of market exchanges. We need covenants as well as contracts; meanings as well as preferences; loyalties, not just temporary associations for mutual gain. These things go to the heart of who we are. They are the 'signals of transcendence' in the midst of a fast-paced world. For life to have personal meaning, there must be people who matter to us, and for whom we matter, unconditionally and nonsubstitutably.

The message of listening to and wrestling with God] is conveyed in a series of passages whose meaning does not lie on the surface of the text, but discloses itself only to those who listen to what is going on beneath the words: the unspoken cry, the implicit appeal, the unheard tears, the unarticulated pain. Those who wish to learn to listen to God must learn to listen to other people – to the kol demama daka, "the still, small voice" of those who need our love.

In general, in the Mosaic books, style mirrors substance. The way something is said is often connected to what is being said.

Memory is my story, the past that made me who I am, of whose legacy I am the guardian for the sake of generations yet to come. Without memory, there is no identity, and without identity, we are mere dust on the surface of infinity.

Yet there is no verb in biblical Hebrew that means to obey.

Without God, there is a danger that we will stay trapped within the prison of the self. As

there is a rabbinic principle: "Scripture does not depart from its plain meaning.

Know that prophecy does not help in-depth study of the meanings of the Torah

Sacrifice is at the heart of both politics and family. Both parent and citizen understand themselves as subject to a demand for sacrifice. They recognise the demand as legitimate because they live in the world of meanings that the sacrificial act affirms. Sacrifice is, accordingly, the way of being in a meaningful world. Sacrifice, we say, is an act of love. In love, we are willing to sacrifice, and through that sacrifice we simultaneously create and discover the subject that we are.

When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible.

Certainly, b?r?' is only ever used of God, but is not restricted to creatio ex nihilo. And '?s?h is sometimes used to mean 'create ex nihilo'.

Ich für meinen Teil denke während einer Verfolgungsjagd gern nach. Keiner stört einen, man ist allein und all die Problemchen werden bedeutungslos. Das wichtigste Thema heißt natürlich: "Wie bleibe ich am Leben?", aber auch andere Dinge sieht man in neuem Licht, was zu ganz neuen und manchmal überraschenden Erkenntnissen führt.

Really?" "No. I'm being ironic. Or is it sarcastic? I can never remember." "Irony's cleverer, so you're probably being sarcastic.

Jesus, Christianity, and the New Testament documents are birthed directly out of Judaism, and so whatever else we understand about their meaning must be grounded in this reality. Any reading that ignores this is a decontextualized reading that may bear some fruit but cannot be described as sensitive to the intention of the text.

We read off the ancient Hebrew words, with no idea of what they might mean, and the congregation responds with more words that they don't understand either. We are gathered together on a Saturday morning to speak gibberish to each other, and you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn't.

You have to question the originality of your life when it can be captured perfectly in the lyrics of a rock song.