Quotes About Meaning

It's a luxury to pursue what makes you happy; it's a moral obligation to pursue what you find meaningful.

Don't use language instrumentally

we may not exactly be God, but we're not exactly nothing, either.

90 percent of communication occurs using just 500 words), among many other things. Sometimes it is known as the Matthew Principle (Matthew 25:29), derived from what might be the harshest statement ever attributed to Christ: "to those who have everything, more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken.

There will always be people better than you—that's a cliché of nihilism, like the phrase, In a million years, who's going to know the difference? The proper response to that statement is not, Well, then, everything is meaningless. It's, Any idiot can choose a frame of time within which nothing matters. Talking yourself into irrelevance is not a profound critique of Being. It's a cheap trick of the rational mind.

Thus, you need to place one foot in what you have mastered and understood and the other in what you are currently exploring and mastering. Then you have positioned yourself where the terror of existence is under control and you are secure, but where you are also alert and engaged. That is where there is something new to master and some way that you can be improved. That is where meaning is to be found.

In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual.

It may well be, therefore, that the true meaning of life is not to be found in what is objective, but in what is subjective (but still universal).

Everybody acts out a myth, but very few people know what their myth is and you should know what your myth is, because it might be a tragedy. And maybe you don't want it to be.

if you adopt a sufficiently profound mode of being, if you attempt to do that, then the mere act of lifting up that weight is enough to justify the fact that you are insufficient and mortal and bound by tragedy

you cease to utter falsehoods and live according to the dictates of your conscience, you can maintain your nobility, even when facing the ultimate threat; if you abide, truthfully and courageously, by the highest of ideals, you will be provided with more security and strength than will be offered by any short-sighted concentration on your own safety; if you live properly, fully, you can discover meaning so profound that it protects you even from the fear of death.

The fact that a symphony ends does not mean it was not worth listening to.

To do something, you have to VALUE something. It is a definitional issue. Because, to DO something, is to ACT OUT the proposition that the thing you are doing, the thing you are AIMING at, let's say, is PREFERABLE to the thing you have. And preferable means that you will do it.

It means willingly undertaking the sacrifices necessary to generate a productive and meaningful reality

Say what you mean, so that you can find out what you mean. Act out what you say, so you can find out what happens. Then pay attention. Note your errors. Articulate them. Strive to correct them. That is how you discover the meaning of your life. That will protect you from the tragedy of your life. How could it be otherwise?

I think often people come to the conclusion that life is meaningless because that's a better conclusion to come to than the reverse; because if life is meaningless, well then, who cares what you do? But if life is meaningful - if what you do matters... then everything you do matters. And that puts a terrible responsibility on the individual. And I think that people are generally unwilling to bear that.

An aim, an ambition, provides the structure necessary for action. An aim provides a destination, a point of contrast against the present, and a framework, within which all things can be evaluated. An aim defines progress and makes such progress exciting. An aim reduces anxiety, because if you have no aim everything can mean anything or nothing, and neither of those two options makes for a tranquil spirit.

Though thirty spokes may form the wheel, it is the hole within the hub which gives the wheel utility. It is not the clay the potter throws, which gives the pot its usefulness, but the space within the shape, from which the pot is made. Without a door, the room cannot be entered, and without its windows it is dark Such is the utility of non-existence.212

Meaning signifies that you are in the right place, at the right time, properly balanced between order and chaos, where everything lines up as best it can at that moment.

Happy" is by no means synonymous with "good.

In a crisis, the inevitable suffering that life entails can rapidly make a mockery of the idea that happiness is the proper pursuit of the individual. On the radio show, I suggested, instead, that a deeper meaning was required. I noted that the nature of such meaning was constantly re-presented in the great stories of the past, and that it had more to do with developing character in the face of suffering than with happiness.

But this Peterson, though erudite, didn't come across as a pedant.

We eternally inhabit order, surrounded by chaos. We eternally occupy known territory, surrounded by the unknown. We experience meaningful engagement when we mediate appropriately between them.

Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor who wrote the classic Man's Search for Meaning, drew a similar social-psychological conclusion: deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism.