Quotes and Sayings about Meaning
"It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators."
- Ansel Adams
(Related: Intention, May, Meaning, Photography, Present, World)
"When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without."
- Ansel Adams
(Related: Eye, Meaning, Word)
"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!"
- Samuel Adams
(Related: Meaning, Tools, Will)
"Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations."
- Alfred Adler
"If you never ask yourself any questions about the meaning of a passage, you cannot expect the book to give you any insight you do not already possess."
- Mortimer Adler
(Related: Meaning, Questions)
"It is true, there are many bad people; there are more of them than in the past, but that is because there are more people, meaning the population has tripled; there must be three times more bad people."
- Bhumibol Adulyadej
(Related: People, Meaning, Past, Population)
"The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning."
- Mitch Albom
(Related: Life, Purpose, Community, Meaning)
"What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy."
- Samuel Alexander
(Related: Meaning, Mind, Philosophy)
"The Impossible Generalized Man today is the critic who believes in loving those unworthy of love as well as those worthy - yet believes this only insofar as no personal risk is entailed. Meaning he loves no one, worthy or no. This is what makes him impossible."
- Nelson Algren
(Related: Love, Man, Meaning, Risk, Today, Unworthy)
"Friendship... is not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything."
- Muhammad Ali
(Related: Friendship, Meaning, School)
"In my own work, I've tried to anticipate what's coming over the horizon, to hasten its arrival, and to apply it to people's lives in a meaningful way."
- Paul Allen
(Related: Work, People)
"I have a profound belief in the power of the Sacraments. I believe that in a Divine way the use of them teaches the teachable their inward meaning and therefore I think we need be in no hurry to attempt to teach new converts all that we think we know about them."
- Roland Allen
(Related: Power, Belief, Meaning)
"Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good."
- Woody Allen
(Related: Love, Experience, Sex, Pretty)
"Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning."
- Dorothy Allison
(Related: Truth, Fiction, Lies, Meaning)
"The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion."
- Pedro Almodovar
(Related: Emotion, Film, First, Tenderness)
"A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people."
- B. R. Ambedkar
(Related: Religion, People, Ethics, Meaning)
"Sanctification is not to be understood here as a separation from ordinary use or consecration to some special use, although this meaning is often present in Scripture, sometimes referring to outward and sometimes to inward or effectual separation."
- William Ames
(Related: Meaning, Present, Scripture, Separation)
"If we knew the meaning to everything that is happening to us, then there would be no meaning."
- Idi Amin
(Related: Meaning)
"Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough."
- Martin Amis
(Related: Money, Meaning, Weapons)
"I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change."
- A. R. Ammons
(Related: Change, Successful, Clarity, Meaning, Order, Stability, Stress)
"I get even more nervous singing when everyone's fallen silent, but I really try to communicate the meaning of the lyrics, and there's people there listening to that, and if they're moved by it, then I'm moved as well."
- Namie Amuro
(Related: People, Listening, Meaning, Singing)
"The worst thing is always thinking of titles for records, with some reason behind them, and she just came out with the word, which she thought was a good word, a hard word, and since then we've sort of attached loads of meaning to it."
- Emma Anderson
(Related: Thought, Meaning, Reason, Thinking, Titles, Word)
"When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live."
- Greg Anderson
(Related: Dreams, Love, Goals, Completion, Deep, Meaning, Needs)
"Over the years, I've trained myself to speak using the same language I would use if I were typing: meaning using full sentences in the way that paragraphs and scenes are arranged."
- Kevin J. Anderson
(Related: Language, Meaning, Years)
"No matter what age you are, or what your circumstances might be, you are special, and you still have something unique to offer. Your life, because of who you are, has meaning."
- Barbara de Angelis
(Related: Age, Life, Circumstances, Meaning)
"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."
- Barbara de Angelis
(Related: Life, Purpose, Drama, Earth, Meaning, Pain, Sense)
"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning."
- Maya Angelou
(Related: Meaning, Voice, Words)
"Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying."
- David Antin
(Related: Children, Saying, Singing)
"I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember."
- David Antin
(Related: Ceremony)
"When man becomes reconciled to nature, when space becomes his true background, these words and concepts will have lost their meaning, and we will no longer have to use them."
- Michelangelo Antonioni
(Related: Nature, Man, Meaning, Space, Will, Words)
"I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life."
- Corazon Aquino
(Related: Death, Life)
"Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash."
- Louis Aragon
(Related: Life, Truth, People, Conflict, Darkness, Error, Light, Opposites, Zone)
"Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless."
- Hannah Arendt
(Related: Action, Name)
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
- Hannah Arendt
(Related: Error, Meaning)
"The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion."
- Matthew Arnold
(Related: Religion, Morality, Emotion, Meaning)
"Since in music we deal with notes, not words, with chords, with transitions, with color and expression, the musical meaning always based on those notes as written and nothing else - has to be divined."
- Claude Arrau
(Related: Music, Expression, Meaning, Nothing, Words)
"All of us want to have meaning in our lives and want to feel like we're doing something that makes a difference. I believe we're doing that in the Justice Department."
- John Ashcroft
(Related: Difference, Justice, Meaning, Want)
"Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time."
- Margaret Atwood
(Related: Time, Meaning, Myths)
"If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?"
- Saint Aurelius Augustine
(Related: Formula, Meaning)
"Unfortunately, Climate Science has become Political Science. It is tragic that some perhaps well-meaning but politically motivated scientists who should know better have whipped up a global frenzy about a phenomena which is statistically questionable at best."
- Robert H. Austin
(Related: Science, Climate, Scientists)
"Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use."
- Sai Baba
(Related: Negative, Values, Emotions, Jungle, Man, Meaning, Spiritual)
"The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder."
- Richard Bach
(Related: Fear, Meaning, Wonder)
"Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise."
- Robert Baden-Powell
(Related: Accident, Act, Meaning, Thinking)
"I feel lucky. I think acting can help to keep you young. It does make you feel there's meaning in your life."
- Jane Badler
(Related: Life, Acting, Help, Meaning)
"My life has been a continuous fulfillment of dreams. It appears that everything I saw and did has a new, and perhaps, more significant meaning, every time I see it. The earth is good. It is a privilege to live thereon."
- Liberty Hyde Bailey
(Related: Life, Time, Dreams, Earth, Fulfillment, Meaning, Privilege)
"The development of the meaning attaching to the personal self, the conscious being, is the subject matter of the history of psychology."
- James M. Baldwin
(Related: History, Development, Being, Meaning, Psychology, Self)
"I've been to MTV and all of that worldly stuff. It's death. It's meaningless."
- Stephen Baldwin
(Related: Death)
"I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order to extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it."
- Toni Cade Bambara
(Related: Experience, Meaning, Order)
"No, I see it as meaning very little at the moment because none of the groups are about anything."
- Lester Bangs
(Related: Meaning)
"Most importantly, the meaning of spirituality lays the seeds for our destiny and the path we must follow."
- Dennis Banks
(Related: Destiny, Meaning, Spirituality)
"The award is important in order to bring people to the movie theater. That's the only principle meaning of any award."
- Javier Bardem
(Related: People, Meaning, Order, Theater)
"The marvelous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing."
- Ronnie Barker
(Related: Meaning)
"I think it's good if a song has more than one meaning. Maybe that kind of song can reach far more people."
- Syd Barrett
(Related: People, Meaning, Song)
"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."
- Roland Barthes
(Related: Books, Culture, Meaning, News, Repetition)
"I consider a poem to be a kind of experiment where a number of elements are brought together under test conditions to see how they will interact to create meaning or relevance."
- John Barton
(Related: Meaning, Will)
"I have become intrigued with the combining of seemingly unrelated ideas or images, or the drawing upon the many, sometimes dissimilar, meanings a word might have."
- John Barton
(Related: Ideas, Word)
"Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art."
- Jacques Barzun
(Related: Art, Meaning)
"There is, however, a change going on in the world. There's far more interest in drawing now than there has been in a long, long time. Schools are beginning to teach drawing again in a serious and meaningful way."
- Leonard Baskin
(Related: Change, Time, Beginning, Interest, Now, Schools, World)
"The art schools... you get young kids doing the most vile and meaningless crap. I think they believe every bit of it."
- Leonard Baskin
(Related: Art, Kids, Schools)
"I think there is an element of nihilism about, but I don't think most artists feel their work is meaningless."
- Leonard Baskin
(Related: Work, Artists, Nihilism)
"A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing."
- Georges Bataille
(Related: Life, Truth, Judgment, Meaning, Mind)
"The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it."
- Mary Catherine Bateson
(Related: Death, Ending, Meaning)
"Politics calls for robust debate and criticism, but this should never descend to personal and demeaning slurs."
- Kim Beazley
(Related: Politics, Criticism, Debate)
"If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper."
- E. T. Bell
(Related: Experience, Mathematics)
"The drawing and the crafting of the story are fun, but it's the overall meaning that matters to me. It might escape some people who just want to read a comic, and that's fine. The overall meaning is what matters."
- Brian M. Bendis
(Related: People, Fun, Meaning, Want)
"There is a profound difference between information and meaning."
- Warren G. Bennis
(Related: Difference, Information, Meaning)
"Movies without meaningful dialogue play well all over the world. The Apostle is probably the best movie of the year, but it won't do squat in Korea."
- Robert Benton
(Related: Movies, Play, World)
"The meaning of life... I think the meaning of life is, I think it's love."
- Julie Benz
(Related: Life, Love, Meaning)
"A situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings."
- Henri Bergson
(Related: Events)
"It is gorgeously shot, and Andrew believes that the old school way of making films in the best way. Meaning: you have a story, and you stick to the story. You don't change and alter the story because of people who've invested in it and what to put product in a shot."
- Michael Berryman
(Related: Change, People, Old, School)
"I do think that Social Security reform needs to be bipartisan, and we are going to have to reach that in this debate at some time before we can find really meaningful reform."
- Judy Biggert
(Related: Time, Debate, Needs, Reform, Security)
"I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. To me it was meaningless. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sings about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing."
- Theodore Bikel
(Related: Beauty, Work)
"A book reaches a different crowd of people. There are 50 different stories of very different individuals participating in their communities either locally or nationally in meaningful ways."
- Joan Blades
(Related: People)
"Look at the Palestinians with the huge, huge percentage of unemployed. What does that breed? Anyone who's unemployed in the world, you feel there's no meaning and there's a risk that you drift over to something desperate. Yes, we have to tackle the social problems as well."
- Hans Blix
(Related: Meaning, Problems, Risk, World)
"Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture."
- David Bohm
(Related: Culture, Revolution, Self)
"People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change."
- David Bohm
(Related: Change, People, Development, Meaning, Opposition)
"A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department... they don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on."
- David Bohm
(Related: Society, Body, Meaning, Sense)
"A new kind of mind thus beings to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue."
- David Bohm
(Related: Development, Being, Meaning, Mind)
"But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence."
- David Bohm
(Related: People, Action, Existence, Meaning, Word)
"When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books You will be reading meanings."
- W. E. B. Du Bois
(Related: Books, Fact, Numbers, Reading, Will, Words)
"Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist."
- Bono
(Related: Brother, Church, Being, Conscience, Meaning, World)
"The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left."
- Robert Bork
(Related: Change, Congress, Constitution, Court, Meaning, Promises)
"Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence."
- Hal Borland
(Related: Meaning, Patience, Persistence, Trees)
"Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks; without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless."
- Norman Borlaug
(Related: Food, Justice, Man)
"The green revolution has an entirely different meaning to most people in the affluent nations of the privileged world than to those in the developing nations of the forgotten world."
- Norman Borlaug
(Related: People, Revolution, Meaning, Nations, World)
"He doesn't know the meaning of the word fear, but then again he doesn't know the meaning of most words."
- Bobby Bowden
(Related: Fear, Meaning, Word, Words)
"Jesus is an example. We have other examples, including many of our ancestors as role models who understood the inner meaning of our orientation."
- Malcolm Boyd
(Related: Example, Meaning)
"The people in your life are important. Meaningful relationships with those people are very important."
- Ed Bradley
(Related: Life, People, Relationships)
"But you are absolutely right that when the international community decides to help in a meaningful manner a country like Afghanistan, then coordination between the various actors that are involved in these processes is very, very difficult indeed."
- Lakhdar Brahimi
(Related: Actors, Afghanistan, Community, Country, Help, Right)
"Music and language are a vital element. We, as actors and directors, offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves."
- Kenneth Branagh
(Related: Experience, Music, People, Actors, Language, Meaning, Want, Words)
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."
- Louis D. Brandeis
(Related: Men, Liberty, Meaning, Understanding, Zeal)
"When we say that Philosophy tries to clear up the meanings of concepts we do not mean that it is simply concerned to substitute some long phrase for some familiar word."
- Charles D. Broad
(Related: Philosophy, Word)
"It is clear that every immediate object of our senses both exists and is real in the primary meaning of these terms so long as we remain aware of the object."
- Charles D. Broad
(Related: Meaning, Senses)
"It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you."
- Phillips Brooks
(Related: Life, Dawn, Meaning)
"Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner."
- Les Brown
(Related: Life, Goals, Meaning)
"The richest most meaningful stories are found in small places: made, carried, crafted, told, and retold by apparently unimportant people."
- Louise Brown
(Related: People)
"There is a deep question whether the possible meanings that emerge from an effort to explain the experience of art may not mask the real meanings of a work of art."
- Jerome Bruner
(Related: Art, Experience, Work, Deep, Effort, May, Question)
"Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively."
- Zbigniew Brzezinski
(Related: Countries, Meaning, Today, Word)
"I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here."
- Warren Buffett
(Related: Idea, Earth, Man, Meaning, states, United, Word)
"I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature."
- Wynn Bullock
(Related: Nature, Meaning, Want)
"I have a problem when people say something's real or not real, or normal or abnormal. The meaning of those words for me is very personal and subjective. I've always been confused and never had a clearcut understanding of the meaning of those kinds of words."
- Tim Burton
(Related: People, Meaning, Understanding, Words)
"I don't feel a lack of hope. It's just disappointment that after all these years we're still fighting meaningless wars for a handful of people."
- Geezer Butler
(Related: People, Hope, Disappointment, Fighting, Years)
"Meaning, however, is no great matter."
- C. S. Calverley
(Related: Meaning)
"Have all the hopes of ages come to naught? Is life no more with noble meaning fraught?"
- Ada Cambridge
(Related: Life, Meaning)
"But most Canadians have recognized to a greater or lesser extent that despite much of the so-called progress of the affluent society, essential ingredients to a meaningful life seem to be either entirely lacking, or at best, difficult to grasp."
- Alex Campbell
(Related: Life, Society, Progress)
"Over the past few years, many of us have increasingly begun to question the direction and meaning of our society as it has developed over the past several centuries."
- Alex Campbell
(Related: Society, Direction, Meaning, Past, Question, Years)
"Some people have said that I can 'hear' a hit song, meaning that I can tell the first time a song is played for me if it has potential. I have been able to hear some of the hits that way, but I can also 'feel' one."
- Glen Campbell
(Related: Time, People, First, Meaning, Potential, Song)
"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."
- Joseph Campbell
(Related: Experience, Life, People, Being, Meaning)
"Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning."
- Joseph Campbell
(Related: Life, Being, Meaning)
"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Happiness, Life, Meaning, Will)
"I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result."
- Charisma Carpenter
(Related: Life, Journey, Meaning, Result)
"You must be absolutely honest and true in the depicting of a totem for meaning is attached to every line. You must be most particular about detail and proportion."
- Emily Carr
(Related: Detail, Meaning)
"If I had one wish for my children, it would be that each of them would reach for goals that have meaning for them as individuals."
- Lillian Gordy Carter
(Related: Goals, Children, Meaning)
"To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Related: Heart, Eye, Fact, Meaning)
"To many, Homer may appear lazy and a loser, but he's just much misguided. He's boorish, sure, but well meaning and, I guess, the one thing we have in common is the pursuit of lousy diets."
- Dan Castellaneta
(Related: May, Meaning, Pursuit)
"We're teaching our kids that attributes as vague and relatively meaningless as a toothy smile or a fine head of hair make a fine statement about a person."
- Neil Cavuto
(Related: Hair, Kids, Smile, Teaching)
"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."
- Marc Chagall
(Related: Life, Love, Art, Artist, Meaning)
"What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning."
- Charlie Chaplin
(Related: Life, Desire, Meaning, Want)
"I find it difficult to believe that words have no meaning in themselves, hard as I try. Habits of a lifetime are not lightly thrown aside."
- Stuart Chase
(Related: Habits, Meaning, Words)
"I would consider all of the legislation which I have supported meaningless if I were to sit idly by, silent, during a period which may go down in history as an era when we permitted the curtailment of our liberties."
- Dennis Chavez
(Related: History, Legislation, May)
"The sea has neither meaning nor pity."
- Anton Chekhov
(Related: Meaning, Pity, Sea)
"Nevertheless the meaning is not that the blessed bread which is divided, which is offered, and which the apostles received from the hand of Christ was not the body of Christ but becomes the body of Christ when the eating of it is begun."
- Martin Chemnitz
(Related: Body, Christ, Eating, Meaning)
"The second thing we did was said, OK, we've now identified the risk, but what do you want to do with the money? Because it's not enough to have risk; you've got to have a meaningful use for the money we give you."
- Michael Chertoff
(Related: Money, Now, Risk, Want)
"The word "good" has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton
(Related: Example, Man, Word)
"The simplest and most basic meaning of the symbol of the Goddess is the acknowledgment of the legitimacy of female power as a beneficent and independent power."
- Carol P. Christ
(Related: Power, Meaning, Symbol)
"In modelling, there is no point in trying to prove you have a brain, so why even bother? I'd sooner save the energy for something more meaningful."
- Helena Christensen
(Related: Energy, Trying)
"Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian."
- Christo
(Related: Art, Meaning, Now, Projects)
"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning."
- Winston Churchill
(Related: Fear, Being, Extremes, Meaning, Sense, Writer)
"To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning."
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Related: Force, Laws, Meaning)
"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Life, Fact, Meaning, Reason)
"All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable."
- Paul Claudel
(Related: Dignity, Expression, Meaning, Symbol)
"I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning."
- Jonathan Coe
(Related: Life, Work, Affection, Culture, Meaning, Value)
"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power."
- Alan Cohen
(Related: Change, Power, Life, Courage, Security)
"The essential meaning of perestroika for Gorbachev and his supporters was creating and acting on alternatives to failed and dangerous policies at home and abroad."
- Stephen Cohen
(Related: Home, Acting, Meaning)
"If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better."
- Paula Cole
(Related: Music, Life, Answers, Meaning, Question)
"The most meaningful engine of change, powerful enough to confront corporate power, may be not so much environmental quality, as the economic development and growth associated with the effort to improve it."
- Barry Commoner
(Related: Environmental, Change, Power, Quality, Development, Growth, Corporate, Effort, May)
"I'm satisfied it's very black, meaning 'in the black'."
- Robert Conrad
(Related: Meaning)
"In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Love, Meaning, Words, Worry)
"The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes." And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No.""
- Aaron Copland
(Related: Music, Meaning, State, Words)
"So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning."
- Aaron Copland
(Related: Music, Living, Meaning, Spirit, Will)
"You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award."
- John Corigliano
(Related: Now)
"A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together."
- Norman Cousins
(Related: Connection, Meaning)
"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat."
- Jacques Yves Cousteau
(Related: Hope, Man, Now, Old, Sea)
"I want to buy them, because historically these have been great engines of enrichment for the middle class, 'historically' meaning now for a good ten years."
- Jim Cramer
(Related: Class, Meaning, Middle class, Now, Want, Years)
"The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority."
- Francis Crick
(Related: Possibility, May, Meaning, Minority, Observation)
"I think things can have more than one meaning and still connect with people. There's a lot of meaning to the title 'Music For People' and they're all true and they're all accurate."
- Jon Crosby
(Related: People, Meaning)
"It's a matter of reducing the work to its very simplest possible state, eliminating all of the things that lead away from the guts of the work, the thing the work is really about. Anything that's there must build towards its over-all organization and meaning."
- Paul Cullen
(Related: Work, Meaning, State)
"Well, there's no question that the law passed in 1996 was flawed. It deregulated the wholesale market, meaning the price that the utilities had to pay energy companies for power, but not the retail market."
- Gray Davis
(Related: Power, Energy, Law, Meaning, Question)
"I don't know the true meaning of happiness."
- Jonathan Davis
(Related: Happiness, Meaning)
"Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young."
- Rebecca H. Davis
(Related: Difference, Driving, Old)
"Now multitudes of root words are identical in the American languages over vast areas some of them with precisely the same senses, and others with various shades of analogical meaning."
- John W. Dawson
(Related: American, Meaning, Now, Senses, Words)
"I liked the challenge of writing in a very concise structure in which both meaning and form are important."
- Jeffery Deaver
(Related: Challenge, Meaning, Writing)
"Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea."
- Guy Debord
(Related: Idea, Progress, Ideas, Improvement, Meaning, Plagiarism, Right, Words)
"But they are not going to take on Big Oil because Big Oil is very generous at campaign time, and this is all about the elections. They want to pretend that they are doing something meaningful."
- Peter DeFazio
(Related: Time, Elections, Oil, Want)
"In a repressive society, a writer can be deeply influential, but in a society that's filled with glut and repetition and endless consumption, the act of terror may be the only meaningful act."
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Society, Act, May, Repetition, Terror, Writer)
"The modern meaning of life's end-when does it end? How does it end? How should it end? What is the value of life? How do we measure it?"
- Don DeLillo
(Related: Life, End, Meaning, Measure, Value)
"Money cannot buy peace of mind. It cannot heal ruptured relationships, or build meaning into a life that has none."
- Richard M. DeVos
(Related: Life, Money, Peace, Meaning, Mind, Relationships)
"Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning."
- John Dewey
(Related: Experience, Happiness, Life, Meaning, Participation)
"If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs."
- Neil Diamond
(Related: Meaning, Songs, Will)
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
- Philip K. Dick
(Related: People, Control, Manipulation, Meaning, Reality, Words)
"The phrase 'off with the crack of the bat', while romantic, is really meaningless, since the outfielder should be in motion long before he hears the sound of the ball meeting the bat."
- Joe DiMaggio
(Related: Meeting, Romantic, Sound)
"My childhood was safe and sane. No abuse and no traumas. I was surrounded by a large and loving family who taught me the importance of hard work and a meaningful education."
- Ronnie James Dio
(Related: Education, Family, Work, Abuse, Childhood, Hard work, Importance)
"Our lives are programmed at conception and are endowed with purpose and meaning."
- Jeane Dixon
(Related: Purpose, Meaning)
"People are looking to have more meaning in their lives. It is a sign the technology community is coming of age."
- John Doerr
(Related: Age, Technology, People, Community, Meaning)
"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Related: Men, Women, Work, Existence, Reason)
"The miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass."
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas
(Related: Fact, Light, Meaning, Water)
"The wealth of south Florida, but even more important, the meaning and significance of south Florida lies in the black muck of the Everglades and the inevitable development of this country to be the great tropic agricultural center of the world."
- Marjory Stoneman Douglas
(Related: Development, Wealth, Country, Lies, Meaning, World)
"I sometimes truly despair at ever being meaningfully altered and affected by the things I claim are so important to me."
- Olympia Dukakis
(Related: Being, Despair)
"To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art."
- Eleonora Duse
(Related: Art, Knowledge, Help, Meaning)
"Making it big in this world is such a rip-off, you gotta keep your head together or it can be totally without meaning."
- Shelley Duvall
(Related: Meaning, World)
"Oh, that all the things my father had told me about how disgusting Washington is are true. And again it's the system - there are lots of nice, well-meaning people there. But it's a sleazy place. And politics is all about doing favors."
- Esther Dyson
(Related: Politics, Father, People, Favors, Washington)
"You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?"
- Freeman Dyson
(Related: God, Life, Purpose, Meaning, Mind)
"Indian names were either characteristic nicknames given in a playful spirit, deed names, birth names, or such as have a religious and symbolic meaning."
- Charles Eastman
(Related: Deed, Meaning, Names, Religious, Spirit)
"But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful."
- Elizabeth Edwards
(Related: Hope, Positive, Act, Effort, Living, World)
"I pretty much ignored politics all through my 20's and 30's... I had other things on my mind... the band, finding a meaningful relationship, getting enough money to eat and pay the rent."
- Mark Edwards
(Related: Money, Politics, Mind, Pretty)
"So, we need to delegitimize the nuclear weapon, and by de-legitimizing... meaning trying to develop a different system of security that does not depend on nuclear deterrence."
- Mohamed ElBaradei
(Related: Meaning, Security, Trying)
"This battle for 'common-sense' gun control laws pits emotion and passion against logic and reason. All too often in such a contest, logic loses. So, expect more meaningless, if not harmful, 'gun control' legislation. Good news - if you're a crook."
- Larry Elder
(Related: Control, Battle, Emotion, Laws, Legislation, Logic, News, Passion, Reason)
"All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation."
- George Eliot
(Related: Key)
"Also, as I lay there thinking of my vision, I could see it all again and feel the meaning with a part of me like a strange power glowing in my body; but when the part of me that talks would try to make words for the meaning, it would be like fog and get away from me."
- Black Elk
(Related: Power, Vision, Body, Meaning, Thinking, Words)
"But I think I have done right to save the vision in this way, even though I may die sooner because I did it; for I know the meaning of the vision is wise and beautiful and good; and you can see that I am only a pitiful old man after all."
- Black Elk
(Related: Vision, Man, May, Meaning, Old, Right)
"People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words."
- Brian Eno
(Related: People, Meaning, Song, Songs, Words)
"First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak."
- Epictetus
(Related: First, Meaning)
"The delusion of entertainment is devoid of meaning. It may amuse us for a bit, but after the initial hit we are left with the dark feeling of desolation."
- Arthur Erickson
(Related: Delusion, Entertainment, Feeling, May, Meaning)
"Although we will both die, and life is utterly meaningless, my time is vastly more important than yours."
- Stephen Evans
(Related: Life, Time, Will)
"If I were doing something that the Bible condemns, I have two choices. I can straighten up my act, or I can somehow distort and twist and change the meaning of the Bible."
- Jerry Falwell
(Related: Change, Bible, Act, Choices, Meaning)
"If, however, the success of a politician is to be measured by the degree in which he is able personally to influence the course of politics, and attach to himself a school of political thought, then Mr. Mill, in the best meaning of the words, has succeeded."
- Millicent Fawcett
(Related: Success, Politics, Thought, Influence, Meaning, School, Words)
"Jesus died to forgive our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not committing them?"
- Jules Feiffer
"I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?"
- Federico Fellini
(Related: Chaos, Confusion, Meaning, Silence, Speech, Television)
"I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it's essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it's a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight."
- Will Ferrell
(Related: Comedy, Drama, Listening, Meaning, Play)
"I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point."
- Laurence Fishburne
(Related: Life, Purpose, Being, Existence, Man, Meaning, Open, Questioning)
"There are readers who want every point to be clearly and unambiguously set forth, and there are those who want to pry ideas and meanings out for themselves."
- John M. Ford
(Related: Ideas, Want)
"God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality."
- Harry Emerson Fosdick
(Related: God, Limits, Mortality, Possibilities)
"Truth implies meaning."
- Lukas Foss
(Related: Truth, Meaning)
"Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human."
- Viktor E. Frankl
(Related: Life, Being, Expression, Meaning, State)
"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."
- Viktor E. Frankl
(Related: Life, Day, Man, Meaning)
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."
- Viktor E. Frankl
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning)
"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."
- Viktor E. Frankl
(Related: People, Meaning, Today)
"Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Actions, Man, May, Meaning, Wit, Words)
"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."
- Benjamin Franklin
(Related: Success, Progress, Achievement, Growth, Improvement, Meaning, Words)
"The simple tableau is so rich with meaning that whether represented on the mantelpiece or in the mind, it seems suspended, complete unto itself, somewhere in eternity."
- Lucinda Franks
(Related: Eternity, Meaning, Mind)
"It's not surprising to see in my own work, looking back, and in the work of some of my peers, an attention to family. It's nice to write a book that does tend toward significance and meaning, and where else are you sure of finding it?"
- Jonathan Franzen
(Related: Work, Family, Attention, Meaning)
"This occasion is personally very meaningful and I hope to visit Korea again if I have the chance."
- Cathy Freeman
(Related: Hope, Chance, Visit)
"It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life."
- Max Frisch
(Related: Life, Ending, Meaning, Sound)
"From slavery to segregation, we remember that America did not always live up to its ideals. In fact, we often fell far short of them. But we also learned that fundamental to our national character is the drive to live out the true meaning of our creed."
- Bill Frist
(Related: Character, America, Fact, Ideals, Meaning, Slavery)
"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Certainty, Man, Meaning, Quest, Uncertainty)
"There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning)
"There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Act, Living, Meaning)
"It has been the acknowledged right of every Marxist scholar to read into Marx the particular meaning that he himself prefers and to treat all others with indignation."
- John Kenneth Galbraith
(Related: Meaning, Right)
"Discipline? I don't know the meaning of the word."
- Liam Gallagher
(Related: Discipline, Meaning, Word)
"Until we perceive the meaning of our past, we remain the mere carriers of ideas, like the Nomads."
- Stephen Gardiner
(Related: Ideas, Meaning, Past)
"The rain began again. It fell heavily, easily, with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature, which was to fall and fall."
- Helen Garner
(Related: Nature, Intention, Meaning, Rain)
"Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other."
- Bill Gates
(Related: Business, Technology, Information, Talk, Talking)
"Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them."
- Paul Gauguin
(Related: Life, Virtue, Evil, Meaning, Nothing, Order, Will, Words)
"Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed."
- Clifford Geertz
(Related: Meaning)
"Our meaning is to make our little planet Earth a better place to live, to stop wars, disarm nuclear missiles, to stop diseases, AIDS, plague, cancer and to stop pollution."
- Uri Geller
(Related: Cancer, Earth, Meaning, Pollution)
"If the work is going well and it's something that has value with some meaning to it, it gives back a lot."
- Richard Gere
(Related: Work, Meaning, Value)
"Either your understanding of the meaning of music is there from the beginning or it is not."
- Gordon Getty
(Related: Music, Beginning, Meaning, Understanding)
"We're thinking about printing the lyrics with the next record so that people can find their own meaning in them. But then they would start having a life of their own, and I think the Portishead music should stay a whole in which the lyrics come second, actually."
- Beth Gibbons
(Related: Life, Music, People, Meaning, Printing, Thinking)
"Hence it is that the shape of something is especially meaningful."
- James J. Gibson
"There has been a great gulf in psychological thought between the perception of space and objects on one hand and the perception of meaning on the other."
- James J. Gibson
(Related: Thought, Perception, Meaning, Space)
"The meaning or value of a thing consists of what it affords."
- James J. Gibson
(Related: Meaning, Value)
"It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information."
- William Gibson
(Related: Information)
"You know I was curious - I was interested in all kinds of mystery or deeper meanings in the paintings because I myself have not analyzed why they have turned out like this or like that."
- H. R. Giger
(Related: Mystery)
"Art is skill, that is the first meaning of the word."
- Eric Gill
(Related: Art, First, Meaning, Skill, Word)
"We must have a relentless commitment to producing a meaningful, comprehensive energy package aimed at conservation, alleviating the burden of energy prices on consumers, decreasing our country's dependency on foreign oil, and increasing electricity grid reliability."
- Paul Gillmor
(Related: Burden, Commitment, Conservation, Country, Electricity, Energy, Oil)
"Eccentric doesn't bother me. 'Eccentric' being a poetic interpretation of a mathematical term meaning something that doesn't follow the lines - that's okay."
- Crispin Glover
(Related: Being, Meaning)
"Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty."
- Herbert Gold
(Related: Beauty, Truth, Careers, Literature, Living, Meaning, Memories, Nerves, Writers)
"It is a sign of the times that the absence of meaningful ID requirements in many states leaves our voting process vulnerable to fraud and allows legal votes to be cancelled out by illegally cast ballots."
- Virgil Goode
(Related: Legal, Absence, Fraud, states, Voting)
"You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know."
- Maxim Gorky
(Related: Meaning, Philosophy)
"This is a basic requirement the meaning of globalization is that we should admit that the economy of each country is dependent on the economy of all the others."
- Richard Grasso
(Related: Country, Economy, Globalization, Meaning)
"But if Shakespeare himself is maybe about meaning and truth, I don't know, then he is certainly about pleasure and interest, we start with pleasure and interest, but maybe eventually it gets to meaning and truth."
- Stephen Greenblatt
(Related: Truth, Interest, Meaning, Pleasure, Shakespeare)
"Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Dumb, Harm, Innocence, Meaning, World)
"Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm."
- Graham Greene
(Related: Dumb, Harm, Innocence, Meaning, Protection, World)
"God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution."
- Graham Greene
(Related: God, Evolution, Meaning, Possibilities)
"We've established a Washington State Academy of Sciences that will enable us to make decisions based on science about what is right for our state, meaning the quality of our lives will get better."
- Christine Gregoire
(Related: Science, Quality, Decisions, Meaning, Right, State, Washington, Will)
"The point is, the political reporters are the ones who no longer understand the ritual they are covering. They keep searching for political meanings in the tepid events when a convention is now essentially a human drama and only that."
- William Greider
(Related: Drama, Events, Now, Ritual)
"Love of man for woman - love of woman for man. That's the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself."
- Zane Grey
(Related: Life, Love, Nature, Man, Meaning, Woman)
"Does a black person make them an African American? No. There are Hispanics that are very, very dark skinned so the word has lost its meaning, it's not a very concise or proper word to use even today and it wasn't then."
- Pam Grier
(Related: African, American, Meaning, Today, Word)
"I have learned not to read reviews. Period. And I hate reviewers. All of them, or at least all but two or three. Life is much simpler ignoring reviews and the nasty people who write them. Critics should find meaningful work."
- John Grisham
(Related: Life, Work, People, Hate)
"For any culture which is primarily concerned with meaning, the study of death - the only certainty that life holds for us - must be central, for an understanding of death is the key to liberation in life."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, Life, Certainty, Culture, Key, Meaning, Study, Understanding)
"Only work which is the product of inner compulsion can have spiritual meaning."
- Walter Gropius
(Related: Work, Meaning, Spiritual)
"Fiction is socially meaningful."
- David Guterson
(Related: Fiction)
"It is not new or unusual for the real Americans, meaning those immigrants who came to America a little bit longer ago, to fear the outsiders, the pretenders, the newcomers."
- Luis Gutierrez
(Related: Fear, America, Americans, Meaning)
"I consider Bush's decision to call for a war against terrorism a serious mistake. He is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies, and one cannot lead a war against a network if the term war is to retain any definite meaning."
- Jurgen Habermas
(Related: War, Mistake, Decision, Enemies, Meaning, Network, Terrorism)
"The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning."
- David Hackworth
(Related: War, Meaning, Old, Saying)
"I am atheist in a very religious mould. I'm always asking myself the big questions. Where did we come from? Is there a meaning to all of this? When I find myself in church, I edit the hymns as I sing them."
- Mark Haddon
(Related: Church, Meaning, Questions, Religious)
"Meaning that if you live in the moment, so to speak, we play today, and tonight we're done."
- Alex Van Halen
(Related: Meaning, Play, Today)
"The audience has to understand that if the film is going to have any meaning for them. If they are going to empathize with the characters, they have to visualize the process of concentration involved in making every move."
- Conrad Hall
(Related: Film, Meaning)
"I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful."
- Pete Hamill
(Related: Meaning, Song, Sun)
"The meaning of the Street in all ways and at all times is the need for sharing life with others and the search for community."
- Virginia Hamilton
(Related: Life, Community, Meaning, Sharing)
"Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided. a mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning."
- Dag Hammarskjold
(Related: History, Destiny, Meaning, Mystery, Reason, World)
"The crucial question one comes back to is the examination; without that experience is meaningless. And I think it's true that society is becoming more and more passive, less and less fired up with enthusiasm, in many spheres."
- Peter Hammill
(Related: Experience, Society, Enthusiasm, Examination, Question)
"Without wisdom, the future has no meaning, no valuable purpose."
- Herbie Hancock
(Related: Wisdom, Purpose, Future, Meaning)
"I think the sense of community that exists with all the characters - that's the answer. The fact that they have found a family in their friends. It does give some depth and meaning to their lives."
- Randy Harrison
(Related: Family, Community, Fact, Friends, Meaning, Sense)
"I don't know for Justin; he's always looking for meaning out of his relationships with people. I don't think he's as trapped into the drug thing as a lot of the others are."
- Randy Harrison
(Related: People, Meaning, Relationships)
"In all my career, in my ups and downs, I've never had a beauty campaign. This was meaningful that at almost 41 years old, I could be getting my first beauty campaign. It made me feel really great."
- Teri Hatcher
(Related: Beauty, Career, First, Old, Years)
"This was meaningful that at almost 41 years old, I could be getting my first beauty campaign."
- Teri Hatcher
(Related: Beauty, First, Old, Years)
"People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make."
- Juliana Hatfield
(Related: People, Choice, Want)
"Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Life, Fact, Meaning, Wonder)
"The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Experience, Absence, Absurdity, Meaning, Words)
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning, Tragedy)
"As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Control, Man, Meaning, Measure, World)
"Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you."
- Vaclav Havel
(Related: Life, Work, Hope, Feeling, Meaning, State, World)
"The fountain of youth with the youthful young musician is one meaning, and the fountain of youth with the youthful energy of the leader is another meaning."
- Roy Haynes
(Related: Leader, Energy, Meaning, Youth)
"And I seemed to discern a power and meaning in the old, which the more impassioned would not allow."
- Frederick Henry Hedge
(Related: Power, Meaning, Old)
"I had seen so many injustices done in the court by well-meaning people. I had lost fourteen clients to gang violence in only seven years. I was angry at a system I thought had failed my clients, and I was part of it."
- Richard Helms
(Related: Thought, People, Clients, Court, Violence, Years)
"Hell is full of good meanings and wishings."
- George Herbert
(Related: Hell)
"I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value."
- Hermann Hesse
(Related: Fortune, May, Meaning, Value)
"To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning."
- Hermann Hesse
(Related: Faith, History, Chaos, Meaning, Order, Study)
"Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them."
- Hermann Hesse
(Related: Meaning, Reality)
"I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist."
- Thor Heyerdahl
(Related: Time, Nature, Future, Meaning)
"In English, the sounds and melodies I created were an inspiration to me, and words came to me as I explored the sounds, and from there I was able expand on the meaning."
- Utada Hikaru
(Related: Inspiration, English, Meaning, Words)
"For the version of this CD released in Japan, a translation of the English lyrics is included, but there are lots of places where meanings are lost in the process of translation."
- Utada Hikaru
(Related: English)
"Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper."
- David Hilbert
(Related: Mathematics, Rules)
"Our lives are the only meaningful expression of what we believe and in Whom we believe. And the only real wealth, for any of us, lies in our faith."
- Gordon B. Hinckley
(Related: Faith, Wealth, Expression, Lies)
"This award is meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid."
- Alfred Hitchcock
"You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era."
- David Hockney
(Related: History, Meaning, Photography)
"But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've taken. Now you could see it of course, with a digital thing, but remember in 1982 you couldn't."
- David Hockney
(Related: Meaning, Now)
"I work from a personal place, and the work has personal meaning for me."
- Jim Hodges
(Related: Work, Meaning)
"Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Life, Purpose, Hatred, Meaning)
"You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this."
- Alice Hoffman
(Related: Job, Sorrow)
"I think America understands that energy security is a very important part of our national security. But if we are going to address energy security in a meaningful way going forward, we need to do it in a new manner. We cannot just be doing the same old thing."
- Chris Van Hollen
(Related: America, Energy, National security, Old)
"But even in the Christian religion, much of its real meaning is hidden by words that are misleading and symbols that but few understand."
- Ernest Holmes
(Related: Religion, Christian, Meaning, Misleading, Words)
"There is a Japanese proverb that literally goes 'Raise the sail with your stronger hand,' meaning you must go after the opportunities that arise in life that you are best equipped to do."
- Soichiro Honda
(Related: Life, Meaning)
"The blues tells a story. Every line of the blues has a meaning."
- John Lee Hooker
(Related: Meaning)
"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."
- A. E. Housman
(Related: Poetry, May, Meaning, Pleasure, Understanding, Will)
"Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity."
- Jean Houston
(Related: Creativity, Key, Meaning, Sense, Senses, Windows, World)
"Security is not the meaning of my life. Great opportunities are worth the risk."
- Shirley Hufstedler
(Related: Life, Meaning, Risk, Security, Worth)
"History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections."
- Johan Huizinga
(Related: History, Facts, Sense)
"When language was not transcendental enough to complete the meaning of a revelation, symbols were relied upon for heavenly teaching, and familiar images, chosen from the known, were made to mirror the unknown spiritual truth."
- William H. Hunt
(Related: Truth, Language, Meaning, Spiritual, Teaching)
"Specialized meaninglessness has come to be regarded, in certain circles, as a kind of hallmark of true science."
- Aldous Huxley
(Related: Science)
"I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: History, Evolution, Fashion, Meaning)
"Some people like to paint trees. I like to paint love. I find it more meaningful than painting trees."
- Robert Indiana
(Related: Love, People, Painting, Trees)
"I am a hidden meaning made to defy. The grasp of words, and walk away With free will and destiny. As living, revolutionary clay."
- Muhammad Iqbal
(Related: Destiny, Free will, Living, Meaning, Words)
"In the first period religious life appears as a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of that command."
- Muhammed Iqbal
(Related: Life, People, Discipline, Purpose, First, Meaning, Religious, Understanding)
"Expression, to a great extent, is a matter of terms, and terms are anyone's. The meaning of 'God' may have a billion interpretations if there be that many souls in the world."
- Charles Ives
(Related: Expression, May, Meaning, World)
"If you want me to sing this Christmas song with the feeling and the meaning, you better see if you can locate that check."
- Mahalia Jackson
(Related: Christmas, Feeling, Meaning, Song, Want)
"The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation."
- Michael Jackson
(Related: Life, Creation, Expression, Infinity, Meaning, Present)
"They're desperately searching for meaning in their lives but they will not crack the Bible open."
- Victoria Jackson
(Related: Bible, Meaning, Open, Will)
"Semantics, or the study of meaning, remained undeveloped, while phonetics made rapid progress and even came to occupy the central place in the scientific study of language."
- Roman Jakobson
(Related: Progress, Language, Meaning, Semantics, Study)
"The task is to investigate speech sounds in relation to the meanings with which they are invested, i.e., sounds viewed as signifiers, and above all to throw light on the structure of the relation between sounds and meaning."
- Roman Jakobson
(Related: Light, Meaning, Speech)
"My training in music and composition then led me to a kind of musical language process in which, for example, the sound of the words I play with has to expose their true meaning against their will so to speak."
- Elfriede Jelinek
(Related: Music, Example, Language, Meaning, Play, Sound, Training, Will, Words)
"Action without a name, a "who" attached to it, is meaningless."
- St. Jerome
(Related: Action, Name)
"In talking, shyness and timidity distort the very meaning of my words. I don't pretend to know anybody well. People are like shadows to me and I am like a shadow."
- Gwen John
(Related: People, Meaning, Shadow, Shadows, Shyness, Talking, Timidity, Words)
"From the throes of inspiration and the eddies of thought the poet may at last be able to arrive at, and convey the right admixture of words and meaning."
- Eyvind Johnson
(Related: Thought, Inspiration, May, Meaning, Right, Words)
"The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: Science, Knowledge, Question, Theory)
"It's better for the listener to interpret their own meanings to the music."
- Kelly Jones
(Related: Music)
"Weigh the meaning and look not at the words."
- Ben Jonson
(Related: Meaning, Words)
"I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect."
- June Jordan
(Related: Life, Love, Fact, Meaning, Respect, Self)
"Everything I've done has been personally fun, important, and meaningful to me."
- Ashley Judd
(Related: Fun)
"The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Life, Meaning, Worth)
"The word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Meaning, Sadness, Word)
"Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Life, Darkness, Meaning, Measure, Patience, Sadness, Word)
"All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire."
- Donald Kagan
(Related: America, Comparisons, Confusion, Ignorance, Meaning, Past, World)
"When the Senate ceases to engage nominees in meaningful discussion of legal issues, the confirmation process takes on an air of vacuity and farce, and the Senate becomes incapable of either properly evaluating nominees or appropriately educating the public."
- Elena Kagan
(Related: Legal, Public, Senate)
"The work itself has a complete circle of meaning and counterpoint. And without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story."
- Anish Kapoor
(Related: Work, Meaning)
"What one does in the studio is to pose a series of problems to oneself. I've got to look for some deeper meaning, for some reason for this thing to be in the world. There's enough stuff in the world."
- Anish Kapoor
(Related: Meaning, Problems, Reason, World)
"Biology, meaning the science of all life, is a late notion."
- Leon Kass
(Related: Science, Life, Meaning)
"Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it."
- Walter Kaufmann
(Related: Life, Purpose, Meaning, Suffering)
"It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose."
- Walter Kaufmann
(Related: Life, Purpose, Meaning, Nothing, Suffering, World, Worth)
"The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness."
- Nikos Kazantzakis
(Related: Darkness, Eyes, Meaning)
"Everything in this world has a hidden meaning."
- Nikos Kazantzakis
(Related: Meaning, World)
"Hardly any actor objects to press. It's a question of it being done in the way they like to see it done, meaning to get down to the serious interview what the profession is so we can reach out to the people to help them get along."
- Harvey Keitel
(Related: People, Actor, Being, Help, Meaning, Press, Profession, Question)
"The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning."
- George F. Kennan
(Related: History, People, Meaning, Problems, Study)
"I'd find it demeaning to be cleaning toilets."
- Jack Kevorkian
"She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Decision, Existence, Meaning)
"Time has lost all meaning in that nightmare alley of the Western world known as the American mind."
- Florence King
(Related: Time, American, Meaning, Mind, World)
"But whether a couple is a man and a woman has everything to do with the meaning of marriage."
- Jack Kingston
(Related: Marriage, Man, Meaning, Woman)
"Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God."
- Jeane Kirkpatrick
(Related: Experience, God, People, Beliefs, Cosmos, Meaning, Sense)
"Color possesses me. I don't have to pursue it. It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter."
- Paul Klee
(Related: Meaning, Will)
"You cannot limit yourself to one area of specialized craft. Instead, regardless of craft, you have to charge all forms of expression that lead to the community, to other people, with meaning."
- Alexander Kluge
(Related: People, Community, Expression, Meaning)
"Practice without improvement is meaningless."
- Chuck Knox
(Related: Improvement, Practice)
"There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in."
- Nicholas D. Kristof
(Related: Americans, Murder, Sense)
"Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways."
- Barbara Kruger
(Related: Art, Design, Work, Content, Meaning)
"Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying."
- Joseph Wood Krutch
(Related: Time, Losing, Meaning, Trying)
"A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later."
- Stanley Kubrick
(Related: Music, Feelings, Emotion, Fiction, Film, Meaning, Moods)
"But I have to add - and this answers your other question - this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel."
- Hans Kung
(Related: Time, Answers, Question, Space)
"The meaning of life is not to be discovered only after death in some hidden, mysterious realm; on the contrary, it can be found by eating the succulent fruit of the Tree of Life and by living in the here and now as fully and creatively as we can."
- Paul Kurtz
(Related: Death, Life, Eating, Living, Meaning, Now)
"Death gives meaning to our lives. It gives importance and value to time. Time would become meaningless if there were too much of it."
- Ray Kurzweil
(Related: Death, Time, Importance, Meaning, Value)
"These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed... but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths."
- Mercedes Lackey
(Related: Life, Family, Earth, Friends, Hell, Leading, Rest)
"Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend - or a meaningful day."
- Dalai Lama
(Related: Friend, Day, Friends, Old)
"Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think viewers are hungry for shows in which people say something meaningful."
- Michael Landon
(Related: People, Old)
"I am waiting for a sign that will indicate to me what meaning I must give to my life, but right now my existence is satisfactory."
- Lucy Lawless
(Related: Life, Existence, Meaning, Now, Right, Waiting, Will)
"The most mysterious feminine factor, the existence that we men, we don't know. It's woman. It's feminine. That's what the sword is about. That's the symbolic meaning of the sword."
- Ang Lee
(Related: Men, Existence, Meaning, Woman)
"The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation."
- Tim Berners Lee
(Related: Computers, Work, People, Cooperation, Information, Meaning)
"Because of recent improvements in the accuracy of theoretical predictions based on large scale ab initio quantum mechanical calculations, meaningful comparisons between theoretical and experimental findings have become possible."
- Yuan T. Lee
(Related: Accuracy, Calculations, Comparisons)
"Words can have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used."
- David Lehman
(Related: Meaning, Right, Will, Words)
"A very considerable body of the German people live in America and propose to fight that Government. Bourke in his great speech last week welcoming the Belgian mission to Boston worked out the President's meaning with care."
- Shane Leslie
(Related: Government, People, America, Body, Boston, Care, Fight, Meaning, Mission, President, Speech)
"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning."
- C. S. Lewis
(Related: Imagination, Truth, Meaning, Order, Reason)
"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."
- C. S. Lewis
(Related: Eyes, Light, Meaning, Universe)
"During the '70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art."
- Sol LeWitt
(Related: Art, Meaning, Words)
"To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it."
- Daniel Libeskind
(Related: Architecture, History)
"Life is like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning."
- Charles de Lint
(Related: Life, Work, Art, Meaning)
"I know who I am and can deal with the use of Indian mascots... But I know it can be demeaning to a group of people. Maybe it would be all right if they were truly honoring the people and are giving due respect to the people they are representing."
- Leonard Little
(Related: People, Giving, Respect, Right)
"Klopstock was questioned regarding the meaning of a passage in his poem. He replied, 'God and I both knew what it meant once; now God alone knows.'"
- Cesare Lombroso
(Related: God, Meaning, Now)
"I'm not going to live my life unhappy and why should he and we talk about it and I think what's great about the film is that it shows is the meaning of family doesn't have to be as traditional as it once was, like you can make a family."
- Nia Long
(Related: Family, Life, Film, Meaning, Talk)
"I'm more interested in the meaning of funerals and the mourning that people do. It's not a retail experience. It's an existential one."
- Thomas Lynch
(Related: Experience, People, Funerals, Meaning, Mourning)
"The secret of it is to read what you've got in front of you. Don't, if you suspect that something has a double meaning, don't pause. Don't put on a leery vocal expression if you know what I mean on radio. Don't sort of do anything other than read it."
- Humphrey Lyttelton
(Related: Expression, Meaning)
"The biological task of science is to provide the fully developed human individual with as perfect a means of orientating himself as possible. No other scientific ideal can be realised, and any other must be meaningless."
- Ernst Mach
(Related: Science)
"Indeed, in the present climate of mistrust of institutions, many people who yearn for a more meaningful and fulfilling life would regard the church as an unlikely place to go for guidance."
- Hugh Mackay
(Related: Life, People, Church, Climate, Guidance, Mistrust, Present)
"The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown."
- Rene Magritte
(Related: Meaning, Mind)
"I was suffering from a peculiar and persistent sense that I was being pursued, and also the conviction that under the political order of the times, our lives had no meaning."
- Naguib Mahfouz
(Related: Being, Conviction, Meaning, Order, Sense, Suffering)
"Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album."
- Aimee Mann
(Related: Music, Emotion, Feeling, Meaning)
"Could I have worked under a system where there were Draconian controls on my creativity, meaning budget, time, script choices, etc.? Definitely not. I would have fared poorly under the old studio system that guys like Howard Hawks did so well in. I cannot."
- Michael Mann
(Related: Time, Creativity, Choices, Hawks, Meaning, Old)
"Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness."
- Katherine Mansfield
(Related: Consciousness, Meaning, Words)
"My life had no meaning at all. I found only brief interludes of satisfaction. It was like my whole life had been about my whole basketball career."
- Pete Maravich
(Related: Life, Basketball, Career, Meaning, Satisfaction)
"In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context."
- Alfred Marshall
(Related: Meaning, Needs, Word)
"The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism."
- Karl Marx
(Related: Peace, Absence, Meaning, Opposition, Socialism)
"To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid."
- Edgar Lee Masters
(Related: Life, Desire, End, Longing, Madness, May, Meaning, Sea)
"And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one."
- Kurt Masur
(Related: Music, Meaning)
"Jazz is rhythm and meaning."
- Henri Matisse
(Related: Jazz, Meaning)
"It seems we're always in transition and that it's more about trends than it is about what's meaningful."
- Marlee Matlin
"When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me."
- W. Somerset Maugham
(Related: Eyes, Meaning, Now)
"We only exist in terms of how we think we exist. Meaning every cultural development is fabricated and can be fabricated."
- Thom Mayne
(Related: Development, Meaning)
"For me the meaning of my work is much more fluid."
- Thom Mayne
(Related: Work, Meaning)
"Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning."
- James McBride
(Related: Meaning, Writing)
"You know, funny is this weird word for me. I hear is so many times it has no meaning anymore."
- Bruce McCulloch
(Related: Funny, Meaning, Word)
"Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Accomplishments)
"It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Life, Difference)
"American society will never completely understand the true meaning of equality."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Equality, Society, American, Meaning, Will)
"To so enter into it in nature and art that the enjoyed meanings of life may become a part of living is the attitude of aesthetic appreciation."
- George H. Mead
(Related: Art, Life, Nature, Attitude, Appreciation, Living, May)
"Man lives in a world of meaning."
- George H. Mead
(Related: Man, Meaning, World)
"In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence."
- Thomas Merton
(Related: Life, Existence, Living, Meaning, Responsibility)
"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone-we find it with another."
- Thomas Merton
(Related: Life, Love, Destiny, Meaning)
"We are to introduce our people into the life of the Church, which is salvation, that they may grasp its meaning, its contents and purpose, to taste and see how good the Lord is."
- Arthur Middleton
(Related: Life, People, Purpose, Church, May, Meaning, Salvation, Taste)
"There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Experience, Home, Meaning)
"Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Life, Fact, Meaning, Obvious)
"I'm not against asking the audience to work, but I think what you have now is a sort of gratuitous deconstruction as a result of a fashion of literary deconstructionism indicating that there are no meanings."
- Jonathan Miller
(Related: Work, Fashion, Literary, Now, Result)
"Religion reveals itself in struggling to reveal the meaning of the world."
- S. H. Miller
(Related: Religion, Meaning, World)
"I was a drama major also so it's cool to cuss for meaning, but for no apparent reason, no."
- Kel Mitchell
(Related: Drama, Meaning, Reason)
"I'm always looking for meaningful one-night stands."
- Dudley Moore
"A lot of the lyrical ideas do have a lot of meaning in a way, although it is somewhat abstracted."
- Thurston Moore
(Related: Ideas, Meaning)
"In both pop and disco, the meaning of the lyrics is not too important. I have nothing I feel I particularly want to say."
- Giorgio Moroder
(Related: Meaning, Nothing, Want)
"I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom."
- Jim Morrison
(Related: Chaos, Disorder, Freedom, Meaning, Road)
"I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical."
- Jim Morrison
(Related: Chaos, Disorder, Freedom, Meaning, Road)
"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."
- Toni Morrison
(Related: Life, Language, May, Meaning, Measure)
"If it awakens in us as a whole how important that is - the theme of how conquest and ambition are meaningless without contribution - I think then as a society we're in better shape. I hope people are inspired to be the best."
- Rob Morrow
(Related: Society, People, Hope, Ambition, Conquest)
"So without getting into the specifics, I can tell you that to the extent that investigation is a relatively important investigation and meaningful, the president would have been periodically briefed."
- Robert Mueller
(Related: Investigation, President)
"It has not been for nothing that the word has remained man's principal toy and tool: without the meanings and values it sustains, all man's other tools would be worthless."
- Lewis Mumford
(Related: Values, Man, Nothing, Tools, Word)
"Awards are meaningless to me, and I have nothing but disdain for anyone who actively campaigns to get one."
- Bill Murray
(Related: Awards, Nothing)
"The fact is that much misunderstanding is often caused by our modern attempts to limit too strictly the meaning of a Greek word."
- Gilbert Murray
(Related: Fact, Meaning, Word)
"It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them."
- Robert Musil
(Related: Idea, Direction, First, Man, Meaning, Possibilities, Value, Will)
"A real parish is a wondrously beautiful web of human relationship which is given meaning by the man who is Himself the meaning of life."
- C. Kilmer Myers
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning)
"Life may be not only meaningless but absurd."
- Thomas Nagel
(Related: Life, May)
"Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace."
- Kent Nerburn
(Related: Life, Peace, Heart, Care, Harvest, Meaning, Will)
"My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning."
- Huey Newton
(Related: Death, Fear, Meaning)
"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Meaning, Suffering)
"We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile."
- Earl Nightingale
(Related: Life, Time, Work, Goal, Comfort, Journey, Meaning, Sleep)
"Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning."
- Anais Nin
(Related: Truth, Meaning, Universe, Words)
"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it."
- Anais Nin
(Related: Art, Perception, Magic, Meaning, Writer)
"There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person."
- Anais Nin
(Related: Life, Meaning)
"I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps."
- Peggy Noonan
(Related: Love, Emotions, Meaning, Order, Speech)
"Our responsibility for BLM lands is multiple-use, meaning a variety of needs and uses."
- Gale Norton
(Related: Meaning, Needs, Responsibility, Variety)
"Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure."
- Henri Nouwen
(Related: Cure, Listening, Meaning, Silence, Words)
"I loved acting, which was never about money, the fame. It was about a search for meaning. It was painful."
- Kim Novak
(Related: Money, Acting, Fame, Meaning)
"Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life."
- Novalis
(Related: Life, Artist, Meaning)
"Suddenly life has new meaning to me, there's beauty up above and things we never take notice of, you wake up suddenly you're in love."
- Billy Ocean
(Related: Beauty, Life, Love, Meaning)
"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."
- Aristotle Onassis
(Related: Money, Women, Meaning, World)
"After a certain point, money is meaningless. It ceases to be the goal. The game is what counts."
- Aristotle Onassis
(Related: Money, Goal)
"It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning."
- George Orwell
(Related: Fear, Country, Democracy, Meaning, Word)
"The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly."
- Vance Packard
(Related: Ability, Difference, Man)
"I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: History, Beauty, Men, Change, Greatness, Meaning, Nobility, Order, Validity)
"The 1990s, after the reign of terror of academic vandalism, will be a decade of restoration: restoration of meaning, value, beauty, pleasure, and emotion to art and restoration of art to its audience."
- Camille Paglia
(Related: Art, Beauty, Emotion, Meaning, Pleasure, Terror, Value, Will)
"I just had a baby. I'm not going to work unless it's something really special and meaningful, because I can't imagine missing all that time with my daughter."
- Gwyneth Paltrow
(Related: Time, Work, Daughter, Baby)
"Dreams are not without meaning wherever thay may come from-from fantasy, from the elements, or from other inspiration."
- Paracelsus
(Related: Dreams, Inspiration, Fantasy, May, Meaning)
"I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway."
- Evan Parker
(Related: Music, May, Meaning, Now, Question, Right)
"Purpose is what gives life a meaning."
- Charles Henry Parkhurst
(Related: Life, Purpose, Meaning)
"Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning."
- Arvo Part
(Related: Life, Music, Work, Answers, Feeling, Meaning)
"Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects."
- Blaise Pascal
(Related: Meaning, Words)
"In view of the meaning given to this honor in the community to which I belong, I should abstain from the undeserved prize that has been awarded to me. Do not meet my voluntary refusal with ill will."
- Boris Pasternak
(Related: Community, Honor, Meaning, Will)
"Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have."
- Walter Pater
(Related: Art, Beauty, Poetry, Excellence, Help, Meaning, Words)
"The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal."
- Pope Paul VI
(Related: Life, Work, Art, Meaning, Value)
"Literature is the expression of a feeling of deprivation, a recourse against a sense of something missing. But the contrary is also true: language is what makes us human. It is a recourse against the meaningless noise and silence of nature and history."
- Octavio Paz
(Related: History, Nature, Expression, Feeling, Language, Literature, Sense, Silence)
"Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings."
- Octavio Paz
(Related: Criticism, Grammar)
"I did my best work in The Mosquito Coast. I know it wasn't such a big hit, but for me it was more meaningful than anything else I'd ever done."
- River Phoenix
(Related: Work)
"If language did not affect behavior, it could have no meaning."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Behavior, Language, Meaning)
"Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Behavior, Language, Perspective, Rules, Universe)
"Without a possibility of change in meanings human communication could not perform its present functions."
- Kenneth L. Pike
(Related: Change, Possibility, Communication, Present)
"Make food a very incidental part of your life by filling your life so full of meaningful things that you'll hardly have time to think about food."
- Peace Pilgrim
(Related: Food, Life, Time)
"Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life."
- Luigi Pirandello
(Related: Life, Living, Man, Meaning, Plants, Value)
"If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals."
- Plato
(Related: Meaning)
"Man - a being in search of meaning."
- Plato
(Related: Being, Man, Meaning)
"Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning."
- Andrei Platonov
(Related: Happiness, Materialism, Meaning, Will)
"Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about."
- John Polkinghorne
(Related: Chance, Novelty)
"The larger meaning here is that mainstream journalists simply cannot talk about things that the two parties agree on; this is the black hole of American politics."
- Michael Pollan
(Related: Politics, American, Meaning, Talk)
"The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art."
- Jackson Pollock
(Related: Art, Will)
"As a member of Congress, and a parent, I understand the importance of ensuring that families are able to provide a meaningful and proper burial for their loved ones."
- Jon Porter
(Related: Congress, Importance)
"Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning."
- Katherine Anne Porter
(Related: Life, Work, Artist, Chaos, Confusion, May, Meaning)
"I'm not convinced about marriage. Divorce is so easy, and that fact that gay people are not allowed to marry takes much of the meaning out of it. Committing yourself to one person is sacred."
- Natalie Portman
(Related: Marriage, People, Divorce, Fact, Gay, Meaning)
"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."
- Ezra Pound
(Related: Language, Literature, Meaning)
"You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look."
- Terry Pratchett
"Man, that record came out and was real big in Memphis. They started playing it, and it got real big. Don't know why-the lyrics had no meaning."
- Elvis Presley
(Related: Man, Meaning)
"Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two."
- Marcel Proust
(Related: Change, Names, Words)
"Everything has a meaning, if only we could read it."
- Philip Pullman
(Related: Meaning)
"Silence is better than unmeaning words."
- Pythagoras
(Related: Silence, Words)
"Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels."
- Willard Van Orman Quine
(Related: Change, Myth, Semantics, Words)
"Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word."
- Willard Van Orman Quine
(Related: Meaning, Word)
"What Christ gives us is quite explicit if his own words are interpreted according to their Aramaic meaning. The expression 'This is my Body' means this is myself."
- Karl Rahner
(Related: Body, Christ, Expression, Meaning, Words)
"Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful."
- Dieter Rams
(Related: Design)
"Providing, meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures - it is the designer's job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting."
- Paul Rand
(Related: Ideas, Job, Meaning, Needs, Words)
"The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization."
- Otto Rank
(Related: Soul, Civilization, Creativity, Meaning, Will)
"Now between the meanings of words and their sounds there is ordinarily no discoverable relation except one of accident; and it is therefore miraculous, to the mystic, when words which make sense can also make a uniform objective structure of accents and rhymes."
- John C. Ransom
(Related: Accident, Now, Sense, Words)
"The principle of equity first came into evidence in Roman jurisprudence and was derived by analogy from the physical meaning of the word."
- Herbert Read
(Related: First, Meaning, Word)
"I had just arrived in New York from California. I was nineteen years old and excited beyond belief. I was an art student and an acting student and behaved as most young actors did - meaning that there was no such thing as a good actor, 'cause you yourself hadn't shown up yet."
- Robert Redford
(Related: Art, Belief, Acting, Actor, Actors, Meaning, Old, Years)
"These films however, have ambiguity built into them, because it's too easy in film to make a strident work of propaganda or advertising, which are really the same thing anyway, meaning the message is unmistakable."
- Godfrey Reggio
(Related: Work, Advertising, Ambiguity, Film, Meaning, Propaganda)
"We must shift the energy policy debate in America with an increased focus on alternative and renewable fuels and Congress must pass meaningful alternative fuels and incentive programs to help move the U.S. away from dependence on foreign oil."
- Rick Renzi
(Related: Policy, America, Congress, Debate, Dependence, Energy, Focus, Help, Oil)
"The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis's quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?"
- Anne Rice
(Related: Meaning, Quest, World)
"Hopefully people can look at our band and see that we're a heavy rock band. We're definitely not a metal band, but we're a band that focuses on meaningful lyrics and melody."
- Adam Rich
(Related: People)
"I wanted to write some lyrics that had some meaning to them, lyrics that were meaningful to me and hopefully people can take something from that."
- Adam Rich
(Related: People, Meaning)
"This is perhaps the most profound meaning of the book of Job, the best example of wisdom."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Wisdom, Example, Job, Meaning)
"Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Meaning)
"Ordinary language carries with it conditions of meaning which it is easy to recognize by classifying the contexts in which the expression is employed in a meaningful manner."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Expression, Language, Meaning)
"On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Life, Time, Questions, World)
"There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation."
- Bridget Riley
(Related: Time, Belief, Open, Reality)
"You see, it's never the environment; it's never the events of our lives, but the meaning we attach to the events - how we interpret them - that shapes who we are today and who we'll become tomorrow."
- Tony Robbins
(Related: Environment, Events, Meaning, Today, Tomorrow)
"Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives."
- Tony Robbins
(Related: Experience, Power, Ability, Beliefs, Meaning)
"It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives."
- Tony Robbins
(Related: Meaning)
"Dreaming or awake, we perceive only events that have meaning to us."
- Jane Roberts
(Related: Events, Meaning)
"Two thousand years ago there was One here on this earth who lived the grandest life that ever has been lived yet - a life that every thinking man, with deeper or shallower meaning, has agreed to call divine."
- Frederick William Robertson
(Related: Life, Earth, Man, Meaning, Thinking, Years)
"America is not just a power, it is a promise. It is not enough for our country to be extraordinary in might; it must be exemplary in meaning."
- Nelson Rockefeller
(Related: Power, America, Country, Meaning, Promise)
"Alabama citizens, like the vast majority of Americans, respect and value the meaning of decency, and appreciate public institutions that reflect the common values of our society."
- Mike Rogers
(Related: Society, Values, Americans, Decency, Majority, Meaning, Public, Respect)
"But also, the guest workers program, it's quite often misused, meaning people could come in as part of a guest workers program and after two weeks in the fields, they'd run off to do every other kind of job that isn't covered by a guest workers program."
- Dana Rohrabacher
(Related: People, Guest, Job, Meaning, Workers)
"I think about the meaning of pain. Pain is personal. It really belongs to the one feeling it. Probably the only thing that is your own. I like mine."
- Henry Rollins
(Related: Feeling, Meaning, Pain)
"Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning lousy hunter."
- Andy Rooney
(Related: Meaning, Old, Word)
"The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of."
- Ned Rorem
(Related: Music, Meaning)
"I've learned to take jobs as an actress that is meaningful to me because I've never taken a job for the money."
- Emily Rossum
(Related: Money, Job, Jobs)
"This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale."
- Mark Rothko
(Related: Living, Meaning)
"The landscape is like being there with a powerful personality and I'm searching for just the right angles to make that portrait come across as meaningfully as possible."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: Being, Personality, Right)
"And just because God attains and wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives win in our union with him the individuality which is essential to their true meaning."
- Josiah Royce
(Related: God, Individuality, Meaning, Uniqueness)
"For the Absolute, as we now know, all life is individual, but is individual as expressing a meaning."
- Josiah Royce
(Related: Life, Meaning, Now)
"The Cube can seem alive as it heats up in your hand. The fact that each face of the Cube is made of three layers of three blocks has an important meaning."
- Erno Rubik
(Related: Fact, Meaning)
"Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours."
- Salman Rushdie
(Related: Meaning)
"The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Education, Work, Being, First)
"Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning."
- John Ruskin
(Related: Work, Fact, Meaning)
"If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Infinity, Meaning)
"The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(Related: Attitude, Lies, Meaning)
"Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning)
"Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(Related: Life, Day, Meaning)
"The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings."
- George Santayana
(Related: Experience, Word)
"It would, of course, be hopeless to attempt to crowd into an international language all those local overtones of meaning which are so dear to the heart of the nationalist."
- Edward Sapir
(Related: Heart, Language, Meaning)
"No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: Infinite, Meaning)
"Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: Life, Being, Illusion, Meaning)
"Be able to describe anything visual, such as a street scene, in words that convey your meaning."
- Marilyn vos Savant
(Related: Meaning, Words)
"Academics act like they are important, but when something is academic it is meaningless. People say, 'It's academic, now let's get work done.'"
- Evan Sayet
(Related: Work, People, Act, Now)
"The truth is the Super Bowl long ago became more than just a football game. It's part of our culture like turkey at Thanksgiving and lights at Christmas, and like those holidays beyond their meaning, a factor in our economy."
- Bob Schieffer
(Related: Truth, Christmas, Culture, Economy, Football, Holidays, Meaning, Thanksgiving, Turkey)
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays."
- Friedrich Schiller
(Related: Man, Meaning, Word)
"Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays."
- Friedrich Schiller
(Related: Dream, Deep, Lies, Meaning)
"Each test pilot I know considers him, or herself, now that there are women, to be the very best. It's very demeaning to step down the ladder once in a while."
- Wally Schirra
(Related: Women, Now)
"Values are principles and ideas that bring meaning to the seemingly mundane experience of life. A meaningful life that ultimately brings happiness and pride requires you to respond to temptations as well as challenges with honor, dignity, and courage."
- Laura Schlessinger
(Related: Experience, Happiness, Life, Ideas, Courage, Values, Dignity, Honor, Meaning, Pride, Principles, Temptations)
"The meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification."
- Moritz Schlick
(Related: Meaning)
"Without question, the material world and your everyday needs distract you from living meaningfully."
- Menachem Mendel Schneerson
(Related: Living, Needs, Question, World)
"A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement."
- Erwin Schrodinger
(Related: Meaning, Observation, Physics, Preparation)
"If there exists no possibility of failure, then victory is meaningless."
- Robert H. Schuller
(Related: Failure, Possibility, Victory)
"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?"
- Charles M. Schulz
(Related: Life, Purpose, Direction, Meaning, Right)
"The United States must also continue to push the United Nations Security Council for strong action to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. In the meantime, it is our job to take meaningful steps to eliminate the threats posed by Iran."
- Allyson Schwartz
(Related: Action, Job, Nations, Security, states, United)
"Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward."
- Morrie Schwartz
(Related: Life, Meaning, Want)
"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things."
- Morrie Schwartz
(Related: Life, People, Wrong)
"Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
(Related: Life, Help, Meaning, Public, Reward, Service, Will, World)
"For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger
(Related: Life, Being, Meaning)
"Sixty-four thousand dollars for a question, I hope they are asking you the meaning of life."
- Paul Scofield
(Related: Life, Hope, Meaning, Question)
"I do it because I want to exercise people's compassion and I do it because I really believe that for some reason what I do is important and meaningful."
- Kyra Sedgwick
(Related: People, Compassion, Exercise, Reason, Want)
"Preachers in pulpits talked about what a great message is in the book. No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books."
- Dr. Seuss
(Related: Books, Meaning)
"The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain."
- Fiona Shaw
(Related: Democracy, Duty, Rights, Meaning, Word)
"A man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Courage, Common sense, Man, Meaning, Originality, Taste)
"He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Courage, Common sense, Man, Meaning, Originality, Taste)
"Another woman approached me while I was having lunch at the Russian Tea Room in New York and told me that the reason she had become a lawyer was because she had read 'Rage of Angels'. To me, that kind of feedback has more meaning than any sales figures."
- Sidney Sheldon
(Related: Angels, Meaning, Reason, Sales, Tea, Woman)
"You must go after your wish. As soon as you start to pursue a dream, your life wakes up and everything has meaning."
- Barbara Sher
(Related: Life, Dream, Meaning)
"Myths are stories that express meaning, morality or motivation. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant."
- Michael Shermer
(Related: Motivation, Morality, Meaning, Myths)
"It shows the truth - that the real meaning of a word is only as powerful or harmless as the emotion behind it."
- Sarah Silverman
(Related: Truth, Emotion, Meaning, Word)
"Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning."
- Clifford D. Simak
(Related: Intelligence, Consciousness, Meaning, Universe)
"The committee's work is not about whether or how we should pay reparations. That was never the intent nor will the payment of reparations be the outcome. This is an effort designed to involve the campus community in a discovery of the meaning of our past."
- Ruth J. Simmons
(Related: Work, Committee, Community, Discovery, Effort, Meaning, Past, Will)
"These happy endings all express the weak and sly promise that the world is not rotten and out of joint but meaningful and ultimately in excellent condition."
- Douglas Sirk
(Related: Promise, World)
"The problem and privilege we all have is being alive in this century and able to read this language. It makes any list meaningless except the list of an illiterate."
- John Sladek
(Related: Being, Language, Privilege)
"It's just that a lot of songs that are popular right now, they don't have any meaning."
- Elliott Smith
(Related: Meaning, Now, Popular, Right, Songs)
"It is important that the audience should understand every syllable of every word, for only then can they grasp the meaning of the song."
- Kate Smith
(Related: Meaning, Song, Word)
"In nearly all ballads, the words set the mood and meaning, while the music intensifies or enhances them."
- Kate Smith
(Related: Music, Ballads, Meaning, Words)
"I vowed that whenever my family needed me, I would give up everything to go to them, no matter what. The show must go on was meaningless to me."
- Kate Smith
(Related: Family)
"This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis... only of that force of precedent which in all times has been so strong to keep alive religious forms of which the original meaning is lost."
- William Robertson Smith
(Related: Force, May, Meaning, Religious)
"Banal words function as a feeble phenomena that fall into their own mental bogs of meaning."
- Robert Smithson
(Related: Meaning, Words)
"To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge."
- Socrates
(Related: Knowledge, Meaning, Nothing)
"Now whatever the origin of this apparently meaningless jumble of ideas may have been, it is really a perfect and very slightly allegorical expression of the actual present views we hold today."
- Frederick Soddy
(Related: Ideas, Expression, May, Now, Present, Today)
"Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall."
- Stephen Sondheim
(Related: Imagination, Nature, Meaning)
"A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Fiction, Mythology)
"Everything has a sort of double meaning for me, there's the ordinary everyday meaning of things, and the imaginary meaning about it all, and I wanted to bring these things together, and in this first big Resurrection of mine you have a good example of this sort of thing."
- Stanley Spencer
(Related: Example, First, Meaning)
"When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little."
- Stephen Spender
(Related: Chaos)
"This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on."
- Oswald Spengler
(Related: Life, Act, May)
"Our perception of songs that we've written... the meaning changes from day to day... to whatever stage we're at in our life and careers."
- Layne Staley
(Related: Life, Perception, Careers, Day, Meaning, Songs)
"Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence."
- George Steiner
(Related: Language, Reality, Rest, Silence)
"All of nature begins to whisper its secrets to us through its sounds. Sounds that were previously incomprehensible to our soul now become the meaningful language of nature."
- Rudolf Steiner
(Related: Nature, Soul, Language, Now, Secrets, Whisper)
"If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt."
- Leslie Stephen
(Related: God, People, Atheism, Doubt, Mind, State, Theology, Words)
"A poem need not have a meaning and like most things in nature often does not have."
- Wallace Stevens
(Related: Nature, Meaning)
"I'm not really quiet or shy. Ask any of my friends! But I always ground my poetry in life itself. Poetry is an art of language, though, so I am always aware of every word's meaning, or multiple meanings."
- Anne Stevenson
(Related: Art, Life, Poetry, Language, Meaning, Quiet, Word)
"I became aware that all sounds can make meaningful language."
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Related: Language)
"Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose."
- John Stossel
(Related: Happiness, Purpose)
"Historians still often see the end of the war as meaning nothing more for Germany than lost territories, lost participation in colonization, and lost assets for the state and individuals. They frequently overlook the most serious loss that Germany suffered."
- Gustav Stresemann
(Related: War, End, Germany, Historians, Loss, Meaning, Nothing, Participation, State)
"I remember those days with Bergman with great nostalgia. We were aware that the films were going to be quite important, and the work felt meaningful."
- Max von Sydow
(Related: Work, Nostalgia)
"Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility."
- Thomas Szasz
(Related: Men, Guilt, Mind, Now, Punishment, Responsibility)
"Composition gives proper meaning to the natural streams of sound that penetrate the world."
- Toru Takemitsu
(Related: Meaning, Sound, World)
"It seems essential to try to find some meaning to life and I guess Jungian philosophy is the one that's helped me understand myself and the world more than anything else."
- Noah Taylor
(Related: Life, Meaning, Philosophy, World)
"I have never had a problem with people not being able to understand the words and the meanings in Titus."
- Julie Taymor
(Related: People, Being, Words)
"If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!"
- William Makepeace Thackeray
(Related: History, Thoughts, Books)
"Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential."
- William Thomas
(Related: Fact)
"'Battle For The Planet Of The Apes', was just a film for kids and didn't have any deep meaning."
- J. Lee Thompson
(Related: Deep, Film, Kids, Meaning)
"The language of friendship is not words but meanings."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Friendship, Language, Words)
"After one hundred years of federal rule, the United States House of Representatives has moved to provide for the first meaningful route to self-determination for the Puerto Rican people under our federal system."
- Dick Thornburgh
(Related: People, First, Self, states, United, Years)
"Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith."
- Paul Tillich
(Related: Faith, Life, God, Act, Being, Meaning, Name, Reality)
"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."
- Paul Tillich
(Related: Answers, Being, Existence, Hurt, Meaning, Question, Religious)
"Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life."
- Paul Tillich
(Related: Life, Religion, Being, Concern, Meaning, Question, State)
"My daughter is a good, caring, compassionate person. To me that's the true meaning of success, even though the marriages didn't work out. My success with my daughter is all that matters."
- Charlene Tilton
(Related: Success, Work, Daughter, Caring, Meaning)
"The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity."
- Leo Tolstoy
(Related: Life, Humanity, Meaning)
"The Ancient Games are relatively obscure to most Olympians, but to understand just what the Games are about, it is really necessary to investigate the roots and the meaning that has transformed culture and society for so many years."
- Bill Toomey
(Related: Society, Culture, Games, Meaning, Years)
"It is necessary to get a lot of men together, for the show of the thing, otherwise the world will not believe. That is the meaning of committees. But the real work must always be done by one or two men."
- Anthony Trollope
(Related: Men, Work, Meaning, Will, World)
"A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit."
- D. Elton Trueblood
(Related: Life, Man, Meaning, Plants, Trees, Will)
"Don't fear your mortality, because it is this very mortality that gives meaning and depth and poignancy to all the days that will be granted to you."
- Paul Tsongas
(Related: Fear, Meaning, Mortality, Will)
"Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning."
- Miguel de Unamuno
(Related: Art, Meaning, Sensations)
"We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe."
- Miguel de Unamuno
(Related: God, Meaning, Order, Universe)
"I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves."
- Leon Uris
(Related: Work, People, Easter, Meaning)
"The overwhelming public sentiment in India was that no meaningful dialogue can be held with Pakistan until it abandons the use of terrorism as an instrument of its foreign policy."
- Atal Bihari Vajpayee
(Related: Policy, Foreign policy, Public, Sentiment, Terrorism)
"Mandy because that was the most meaningful relationship."
- Wilmer Valderrama
"Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself."
- Gore Vidal
(Related: Life, Sex, Meaning, Nothing)
"The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man."
- Alfred de Vigny
(Related: God, End, Eye, Man, Meaning, Race, Tragedy, Unity, Will, World)
"Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Time, Body, Meaning, Myth, Traditions)
"Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life."
- Voltaire
(Related: Life, Spirit, Word)
"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."
- Kurt Vonnegut
(Related: People, Order, Talk, Voice)
"The trouble with Reason is that it becomes meaningless at the exact point where it refuses to act."
- Bernard De Voto
(Related: Act, Reason, Trouble)
"No man or woman is an island. To exist just for yourself is meaningless. You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life, something greater than yourself."
- Denis Waitley
(Related: Life, Purpose, Man, Satisfaction, Woman)
"Bach opens a vista to the universe. After experiencing him, people feel there is meaning to life after all."
- Helmut Walcha
(Related: Life, People, Meaning, Universe)
"It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: People, Country, Discrimination, May, Meaning, Religious)
"I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning."
- Andy Warhol
(Related: Meaning)
"The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life."
- Robert Penn Warren
(Related: Life, End, Light, Man, May, Myth)
"This awareness instills a fierce desire to protect that heritage and - in doing so - to educate Americans in the meaning and importance of our pivotal documents."
- Allen Weinstein
(Related: Americans, Awareness, Desire, Importance, Meaning)
"There's almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them."
- Peter Weir
(Related: Fear, Ideas, Choices, Meaning, Self, Words)
"I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act."
- Orson Welles
(Related: Act, Theater, Want)
"After people have repeated a phrase a great number of times, they begin to realize it has meaning and may even be true."
- H. G. Wells
(Related: People, May, Meaning)
"If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning."
- Mae West
(Related: Coffee, Meaning)
"I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether."
- Alfred North Whitehead
(Related: Meaning, Writers)
"But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire."
- Benjamin Whorf
(Related: People, Behavior, Fire, Meaning, Physics)
"Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life."
- Elie Wiesel
(Related: Life, Meaning, Obligation)
"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
- Thornton Wilder
(Related: Love, Survival, Land, Living, Meaning)
"Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning."
- Armstrong Williams
(Related: Action, Abuse, Contempt, Democracy, Fanatics, Rights, Human rights, Meaning, Murder, Religious)
"Even in this glowering age, morality animates our lives with meaning."
- Armstrong Williams
(Related: Age, Morality, Meaning)
"The famous saying 'God is love', it is generally assumed, means that God is like our immediate emotional indulgence, not that the meaning of love ought to have something of the 'otherness' and terror of God."
- Charles Williams
(Related: Love, God, Famous, Meaning, Saying, Terror)
"Ah, yes, divorce... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet."
- Robin Williams
(Related: Divorce, Man, Meaning, Word)
"The answer was that in Burundi, having a clean bill of health has taken on a very particular meaning: unless and until you have paid for your hospital treatment, you simply can't leave, you are in effect a captive."
- Rowan D. Williams
(Related: Health, Effect, Treatment)
"A meaningless statement remains meaningless no matter how often it's heard."
- Roy H. Williams
"Fill you mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world preoccupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart."
- Marianne Williamson
(Related: Peace, Heart, Mind, Will, World)
"The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Art, Life, Work, Dance, Goal, Now, Right)
"All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense."
- Robert Anton Wilson
(Related: Sense)
"Anybody can be very destructive in that position without at all meaning to be, and I know that I have been inadvertently destructive in the past for certain people on certain occasions."
- Tobias Wolff
(Related: People, Meaning, Past)
"Life has meaning only in the struggle. Triumph or defeat is in the hands of the Gods. So let us celebrate the struggle!"
- Stevie Wonder
(Related: Life, Gods, Defeat, Meaning, Struggle)
"Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters."
- John Wooden
(Related: Winning, Eyes, Possessions)
"When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly."
- Virginia Woolf
(Related: Meaning, Senses, Skin)
"Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us."
- Francis Wright
(Related: Nature, Time, Facts, Meaning, Observation, Words)
""Think simple" as my old master used to say - meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
(Related: First, Meaning, Old, Principles)
"If liberty has any meaning it means freedom to improve."
- Philip Wylie
(Related: Freedom, Liberty, Meaning)
"I know some people say I can be funny. But there is always a deeper meaning to what I say. I am a socialist at heart and have the interests of the poor in mind. When people see how I manage to work my way out of tough situations, it gives them hope in their own life."
- Lalu Prasad Yadav
(Related: Life, Work, Funny, People, Heart, Hope, Meaning, Mind, Poor)
"Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful."
- Martin Yan
(Related: Happiness, People, Applause, Nothing, Praise)
"First, we have to find a common vocabulary for energy security. This notion has a radically different meaning for different people. For Americans it is a geopolitical question. For the Europeans right now it is very much focused on the dependence on imported natural gas."
- Daniel Yergin
(Related: People, Americans, Dependence, Energy, First, Meaning, Now, Question, Right, Security, Vocabulary)
"To do art, one thing should always remember - subjects of people in misery have deep meanings."
- Zhang Yimou
(Related: Art, People, Deep, Misery)