Quotes About Meaning

We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we've always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn't. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things to be misleading, even pernicious.

Watson retorted: 'Well I don't think we're for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose. But I'm anticipating having a good lunch.' We did have a good lunch, too.

The fact that something is written down is persuasive to people not used to asking questions like: 'Who wrote it, and when?' 'How did they know what to write?' 'Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in our time, understand them to be saying?' 'Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?

Perhaps, then, the words male and female have no general meaning.

Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world

Sözcükler bizim hizmetkârlar?m?zd?r, efendilerimiz deÄŸil.

We needn't bother with exactly what 'electric charge' means here.

There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else (parents in the case of children, God in the case of adults) has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point.

if by "God" one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying . . . it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.

As many atheists have said better than me, the knowledge that we have only one life should make it all the more precious.

Nós é que decidimos se nossa vida será significativa, plena e maravilhosa. E podemos fazer com que ela seja mesmo maravilhosa.

H. L. Mencken was prophetic when he wrote: 'Deep within the heart of every evangelist lies the wreck of a car salesman.

Words are our servants, not our masters. For different purposes we find it convenient to use words in different senses.

Well, my family has been Catholic for generations, so doesn't that make me Catholic?' 'That's lazy, sloppy abuse of language. My family has been farming for generations but that doesn't define me as a farmer.

God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene to change the course of history using his omnipotence. But that means he can't change his mind about his intervention, which means he is not omnipotent.

Human suffering has been caused because too many of us cannot grasp that words are only tools for our use, and that the mere presence in the dictionary of a word like 'living' does not mean it necessarily has to refer to something definite in the real world.

It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck.

The wolfish horror of the worst scriptural verses is cloaked under various forms of sheep's clothing: the words are not meant to be taken literally, they are 'metaphorical'.

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.

Not every English sentence beginning with the word why is a legitimate question.

Some people have views of God that are so broad and flexible that it is inevitable that they will find God wherever they look for him. One hears it said that 'God is the ultimate' or 'God is our better nature' or 'God is the universe.' Of course, like any other word, the word 'God' can be given any meaning we like. If you want to say that 'God is energy,' then you can find God in a lump of coal.

even if the question is a real one, does the fact that science cannot answer it imply that religion can.

Even if it were true that we need God to be moral, it would of course not make God's existence more likely, merely more desirable (many people cannot tell the difference).

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. ALBERT EINSTEIN