Quotes About Purpose

We want to believe that our lives have some objective meaning, and that our sacrifices matter to something beyond the stories in our head. Yet in truth the lives of most people have meaning only within the network of stories they tell one another.

the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?', but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.

Tales viajes (los espirituales) son fundamentalmente diferentes de las religiones, porque el objetivo de las religiones es cimentar el orden mundano, mientras que el de su espiritualidad es escapar de él.

Organs evolve to perform a particular function, but once they exist, they can be adapted for other usages as well. Mouths, for example, appeared because the earliest multicellular organisms needed a way to take nutrients into their bodies. We still use our mouths for that purpose, but we also use them to kiss, speak and, if we are Rambo, to pull the pins out of hand grenades.

The universe does not give me meaning. I give meaning to the universe. This is my cosmic vocation. I have no fixed destiny or dharma. If I find myself in Simba's or Arjuna's shoes, I can choose to fight for the crown of a kingdom, but I don't have to. I can just as well join a wandering circus, go to Broadway to sing in a musical, or move to Silicon Valley and launch a start-up. I am free to create my own dharma.

Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other.

for decades, membership in all kinds of groups has declined as much as one-quarter. That's a lot of people who now need to find a sense of purpose and support somewhere else.

The Bible thinks it is perfectly all right to destroy all animals as punishment for the crimes of Homo sapiens, as if the existence of giraffes, pelicans and ladybirds has lost all purpose if humans misbehave. The Bible could not imagine a scenario in which God repents having created Homo sapiens, wipes this sinful ape off the face of the earth, and then spends eternity enjoying the antics of ostriches, kangaroos and panda bears.

meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.

happiness consists in seeing one's life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. There is an important cognitive and ethical component

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.

Como bomberos en un mundo sin fuego, en el siglo XXI la humanidad necesita plantearse una pregunta sin precedentes: ¿qué vamos a hacer con nosotros?

Tamamen bilimsel bir bak?? aç?s?yla bilebildi?imiz kadar?yla, insan ya?am?n?n hiçbir anlam? yoktur. ?nsanlar belirli bir amac? olmayan ve körlemesine ilerleyen evrimsel süreçlerin sonucudur ve faaliyetlerimiz ilahi bir kozmik plan?n parças? de?ildir.

We still use our mouths for that purpose, but we also use them to kiss, speak and, if we are Rambo, to pull the pins out of hand grenades.

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.

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.

At first, humans kept on believing in God, and argued that humans are sacred because they were created by God for some divine purpose. Only much later did some people dare say that humans are sacred in their own right, and that God doesn't exist at all. Similarly, today most Dataists say that the Internet-of-All-Things is sacred because humans are creating it to serve human needs. But eventually, the Internet-of-All-Things may become sacred in its own right.

But evolution has no purpose.

Rather, happiness consists in seeing one's life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile.

The Hindu epic the Bhagavad Gita relates how in the midst of a murderous civil war, the great warrior prince Arjuna is consumed with doubt. Seeing his friends and relatives in the opposing army, he hesitates over whether to fight and kill them. He begins to wonder what good and evil are, who decided it, and what the purpose of human life is.

so humankind in the twenty-first century needs to ask itself an unprecedented question: what are we going to do with ourselves? In a healthy, prosperous and harmonious world, what will demand our attention and ingenuity? This question becomes doubly urgent given the immense new powers that biotechnology and information technology are providing us with. What will we do with all that power?