“The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.”

— Maurice Merleau-Ponty , book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception (1945), p. xi

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Maurice Merleau-Ponty 24

French phenomenological philosopher 1908–1961

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: The Shoemaker's Wife

“Nothing takes place in the world whose meaning is not that of some maximum or minimum.”

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician

“Without animals, there would be no humanity. In a world of just people, people will mean nothing…”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

“The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

translated as The Cost of Discipleship (1959), p. 51.
Discipleship (1937), Costly Grace
Context: The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that.

“Learning something means coming into contact with a world of which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“This is a mans world.
This is a mans world.
But it would be nothing, nothing
Without a women or a girl.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

It's a Man's Man's Man's World, written with Betty Jean Newsome, from It's a Man's Man's Man's World (1966)
Song lyrics

“I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Voice: Young Man
1840s, Repetition (1843)
Context: One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?