Purpose And Meaning Quotes

1. "It was because historians made it sound so coherent, so purposeful, so complete. They'd take an entire century and impose a meaning on it, a personality, a destiny-and his was, of course, a lie."
Author: Anne Rice

2. "What allows us, as human beings, to psychologically survive life on earth, with all of its pain, drama, and challenges, is a sense of purpose and meaning."
Author: Barbara De Angelis

3. "Connection is why we're here. We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering."
Author: Brené Brown

4. "Whether we're overcoming adversity, surviving trauma, or dealing with stress and anxiety, having a sense of purpose, meaning, and perspective in our lives allows us to develop understanding and move forward. Without purpose, meaning, and perspective, it is easy to lose hope, numb our emotions, or become overwhelmed by our circumstances. We feel reduced, less capable, and lost in the face of struggle. The heart of spirituality is connection. When we believe in that inextricable connection, we don't feel alone."
Author: Brené Brown

5. "The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war's appeal."
Author: Chris Hedges

6. "It's also hard for people to contend with the difficult possibility that we are simply overadvanced fungi and bacteria hurtling through a galaxy in cold, meaningless space. But just because our existence may have arisen unintentionally and without purpose doesn't preclude meaning or purpose from emerging as a result of our interaction and collaboration. Meaning may not be a precondition for humanity as much as a by-product of it."
Author: Douglas Rushkoff

7. "Sulien held up the broken spear, one piece in each hand. "A warhammer did this?""You saw that hammer the Lightning almost hit Addolgar with. And that's not even the one he uses during battles. That one is bloody huge. Nearly asbig as the bastard's head."Her father chuckled and stepped around her. "The only purpose of this spear was to protect you—and it did. Its job is now done." He started tothrow the pieces into a bin he kept for trash."Don't you dare throw that out.""Why not? It's broken, and repairing it would be useless. It'l only break again.""But you made it for me.""You cling to what is meaningless, child. Just like your mother sometimes, only with her it's mostly grudges."
Author: G.A. Aiken

8. "It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian society.[...]what the poet is saying- that is, what his poem "means" if translated into prose- is relatively unimportant, even to himself. The thought contained in a poem is always simple, and is no more the primary purpose of the poem than the anecdote is the primary purpose of the picture. A poem is an arrangement of sounds and associations, as a painting is an arrangement of brushmarks. For short snatches, indeed, as in the refrain of a song, poetry can even dispense with meaning altogether."
Author: George Orwell

9. "Men are just men - it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone - the noblest man alive or the most wicked - has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion."
Author: Gregory David Roberts

10. "To a certain degree,We all seek, life's purpose and meaning,love, peace and joy,and knowledge, wealth and power…"
Author: I. Alan Appt

11. "Man was created as a being whose very existence is derived from and dependent upon a Creator whom he must acknowledge as such and from whom he must obtain wisdom and knowledge through revelation. The purpose and meaning of his life, as well as his very existence, is derived and dependent. He can find none of this in himself. Man is not autonomous."
Author: Jay E. Adams

12. "Many people require more than just evidence before they'll accept evolution. To these folks,evolution raises such profound questions of purpose, morality, and meaning that they just can't accept it no matter how much evidence they see. It's not that we evolved from apes that bothers them so much; it's [[the emotional consequences of facing that fact.]] And unless we address those concerns, we won't progress in making evolution a universally acknowledged truth."
Author: Jerry A. Coyne

13. "And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and the meaning of eternity, I have nevertheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we got here, and why–- which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive."
Author: Jon Krakauer

14. "For some individuals - some soldiers, some contractors - combat provides a kind of purpose and meaning beyond which all else potentially pales in comparison."
Author: Kathryn Bigelow

15. "A metaphor is not merely a linguistic expression (a form of words) used for artistic or rhetorical purposes; instead, it is a process of human understanding by which we achieve meaningful experience that we can make sense of. A metaphor, in this "experiential" sense, is a process by which we understand and structure one domain of experience in terms of another domain of a different kind."
Author: Mark Johnson

16. "...they make us dependent on a social system that exploits our energies for its own purposes. ...If a person learns to enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself, the burden of social controls automatically falls from one's shoulders."
Author: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

17. "Reflection is a good thing. It allows us to look back in time so we can connect the dots between specific memories to reveal the purpose and meaning behind synchronistic events."
Author: Molly Friedenfeld

18. "Will we be extinguished? What difference does it make then, the ones of us who had plans, what does it matter the work we've done? The children we've raised? He looked pointedly at Olhado. "What will it matter then, that you have such a big happy family, if you're all erased in one instant by that … bomb? "Not one moment of my life with my family has been wasted," said Olhado quietly. "But the point of it is to go on, isn't it? To connect with the future?" "That's one part, yes," said Olhado. "But part of the purpose of it is now, is the moment. And part of it is the web of connections. Links from soul to soul. If the purpose of life was just to continue into the future, then none of it would have meaning, because it would be all anticipation and preparation. There's fruition, Grego. There's the happiness we've already had. The happiness of each moment. The end of our lives, even if there's no forward continuation, no progeny at all, the end of our lives doesn't erase the beginning."
Author: Orson Scott Card

19. "They don't understand that religion and science are there to serve different purposes. We need science to understand how everything on this planet and beyond works – us, nature, everything we see around us. That's fact – no one with a working brain can question that. But we also need religion. Not for ridiculous counter-theories about things that science can prove. We need it for something else, to fill a different kind of need. The need for meaning. It's a basic need we have, as humans. And it's a need that's beyond the realm of science. Your scientists don't understand that it's a need they can't fulfill no matter how many Hadron colliders and Hubble telescopes they build- and your preachers don'[t understand that their job is to help you discover a personal, inner sense of meaning and not behave like a bunch of zealots intent on converting the rest of the planet to their rigid, literalist view of how everyone should live their lives."
Author: Raymond Khoury

20. "You remember our talk about purpose and meaning?" he asked me, the smile disappearing. "Well, I think this might be mine. I think this is what I was meant to do, Georgina."
Author: Richelle Mead

21. "Your life should consist of more than commuting, working, eating, surfing the Internet, sleeping and watching TV. Your life should be filled with purpose-driven experiences and projects that bring excitement, passion, energy, and authentic meaning and joy into your life."
Author: Richie Norton

22. "Think about Isis," Jaz repeated. "And Sadie…thereis a purpose. You taught us that. We choose to believe in Ma'at. We create order out of chaos, beauty and meaning out of ugly randomness. That's what Egypt is all about. That's why its name, its ren, has endured for millennia. Don't despair. Otherwise Chaos wins."
Author: Rick Riordan

23. "Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope."
Author: Rick Warren

24. "Though not necessarily aware of when we feel purpose and meaning, we are nearly always aware of the sickening feeling when we don't possess them. This isn't an intellectual misapprehension; it is a gut sense of disorientation and a loss of personal direction. Rarely are brute mental effort and self-help pep talks able to rekindle the missing feeling. For most of us, we simply wait patiently, knowing from past experience that the feeling will return in its own sweet time . . . Of particular interest is [Tolstoy's] conclusion as to the inability of science and reason to provide a personal sense of meaning."
Author: Robert A. Burton

25. "Without God, life would end at the grave and our mortal experiences would have no purpose. Growth and progress would be temporary, accomplishment without value, challenges without meaning. There would be no ultimate right and wrong and no moral responsibility to care for one another as fellow children of God. Indeed, without God, there would be no mortal or eternal life. If you or someone you love is seeking purpose in life or a deeper conviction of God's presence in our lives, I offer, as a friend and as an Apostle, my witness. He lives!"
Author: Robert D. Hales

26. "Life truly is what you make it. The purpose and meaning of life is the purpose and meaning that you give it."
Author: Steven Redhead

27. "In short, the Enlightenment privatized marriage, taking it out of the public sphere, and redefined its purpose as individual gratification, not any "broader good" such as reflecting God's nature, producing character, or raising children. Slowly but surely, this newer understanding of the meaning of marriage has displaced the older ones in Western culture."
Author: Timothy Keller

28. "Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone's right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right. But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end. No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities."
Author: Vasily Grossman

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