This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one." - Albert Camus
"The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions." - Albert Camus
"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
"I have seen many people die because life for them was not worth living. From this I conclude that the question of life’s meaning is the most urgent question of all." - Albert Camus
"The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions." -
"Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibly, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Religion is the vision of something that stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehensions, something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest." - Alfred North Whitehead
"The scholar is not The Intellectual. He is Man Thinking. Man Thinking is not the member of a race apart. He is the citizen performing the function appointed for all citizens in a civilized state, a function without which there would be no civilized state. He is Everyman purposefully apprehending the meaning of things." - Alfred Whitney Griswold
"To me the truth is something which cannot be told in a few words, and those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning." - Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
"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." - Anaïs Nin, born Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
"Symbols are deeper than words; speak when words become silent; gain where words lose in meaning; and so in hours of holiest worship the Church teaches, by symbols, truth language may not utter." - Andrew Martin Fairbairn
"It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives." - Anthony "Tony" Robbins
"Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Life has a meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Nothing has meaning until I mingle my mind and body with it; nor is there adventure unless I share in it." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Peace is present when man can see the face that is composed of things that have meaning and are in their place. Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Prison walls cannot confine him who loves, for he belongs to an empire that is not of this world, being made not of material things but of the meaning of things; and thus he mocks at walls." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves but in our attitude towards them." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"For I have lit on a great truth: to wit, that all men dwell, and life’s meaning changes for them with the meaning of the home." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Loneliness is bred of a mind that has grown earthbound. For the spirit has its homeland, which is the realm of the meaning of things." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Man's "progress' is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Our very psychology has been shaken to its foundation. To grasp the meaning of the world today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true nature, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"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
"Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence." - Aristotle NULL
"A wise man once said that all human activity is a form of play. And the highest form of play is the search for Truth, Beauty and Love. What more is needed? Should there be a “meaning” as well, that will be a bonus. If we waste time looking for life’s meaning, we may have no time to live - or to play. Our graceful, smiling cousins in the sea may be wiser than us." - Arthur C Clarke, formally Sir Arthur Charles Clark
"Beyond the nature taught by science is the spirit that gives meaning to life." - Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton
"I should be inclined to claim that the person who limits his interests to the means of living without consideration of the content or meaning of his life is defeating God's great purpose when he brought into existence a creature with the intelligence and godlike powers that are found in man. It is in living wisely and fully that one's soul grows." - Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton
"We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves, and those who think through others. The latter are the rule, and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the world. It is from them only that the world learns wisdom. For only the light which we have kindled in ourselves can illuminate others." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness… It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature – and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give it meaning – and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are of no concern of mine; it is not me or “The Fountainhead” that they will betray: it is their own souls." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Each prayer has it own proper meaning and it is therefore the specific key to a door in the Divine Palace, but a broken heart is an axe which opens all the gates." - Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer
"The very truths which concern us most can only be half spoken, but with attention we can grasp the whole meaning." - Baltasar Gracián
"Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom." - Bergen Baldwin Evans
"Life is so mysterious. People are in misery, and they don’t know how to get out, get help or free themselves. Life is total freedom, but we’re trapped in our own civilization, culture, religion, teachings. We’re equipped with fear, ignorance, unhappiness. Desire is the big evil, the big temptation. Many people carry on in life without knowing this. We do so much for our bodies but not for our souls. Pay attention to yourself, monitor your thinking and capture the villains within. Know what it is in you that would make people suffer more, make people suffer less. Know this and you know how to use your thinking and abilities to bring peace. Certain people have certain duties, a talent. The meaning of life is to see this mission, fulfill it and make the maximum use of your life and your benefit and mankind’s." - Bernie S. Siegel
"Humanity is not an accident, and life has profound meaning... We discover the true meaning of life only when we turn to God in faith and commitment." - Billy Graham, formally William Franklin "Billy" Graham
"Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues – and in terms of the problems of history-making. Know that the human meaning of public issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles – and to the problems of the individual life." -
"There is not even a meaning to the word experience which would not presuppose the distinction between past and future." - Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker
"The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning." - Carl Sagan
"Purpose is what gives life a meaning." - Charles Henry Parkhurst
"The man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization. And when native man left off this form of development, his humanization was retarded in growth." -
"We must each find our separate meaning in the persuasion of our days until we meet in the meaning of the world." - Christopher Fry
"What I ask is absurd: that life shall have a meaning. What I strive for is impossible: that my life shall acquire a meaning." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"Your ‘personal’ life cannot have a lasting intrinsic meaning. It can acquire a contingent meaning, but only by being fitted into and subordinated to something which ‘lasts’ and has a meaning in itself. Is this something what we attempt to identify when we speak of ‘Life’? Can your life have a meaning as a tiny fragment of life? Does Life exist? Seek and you shall find, experience Life as reality. Has Life a ‘meaning’? Experience Life as reality and the question becomes meaningless. Seek - ? Seek by daring to take the leap into unconditional obedience. Dare this when you are challenged, for only by the light of a challenge will you be able to see the cross-roads and, in full awareness of your choice, turn your back upon your personal life - with no right ever to look back. You will find that ‘in the pattern’ you are liberated from the need to live ‘with the herd’. You will find that, thus subordinated, your life will receive from Life all its meaning, irrespective of the conditions given you for its realization. You will find that the freedom of the continual farewell, the hourly self-surrender, gives to your experience of reality the purity and clarity which signify - seal-realization. You will find that obedience requires an act of will which must continually be re-iterated, and that you will fail, if anything in your personal life is allowed to slip back into the center." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"We have come from seeking meaning to finding meaning in the seeking." - Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin
"The differences in human life depend, for the most part, not on what men do, but upon the meaning and purpose of their acts... Wisdom about life consists in taking the inevitable ventures which are the very stuff of common existence, and glorifying them." - Elton Trueblood, fully David Elton Trueblood
"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." - Elton Trueblood, fully David Elton Trueblood