“"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.”
As quoted in LIFE magazine (December 1988) http://www.humancondition.info/Beyond/ScienceReligion.html
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Julian Jaynes 43
American psychologist 1920–1997Related quotes

"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949), The World As I See It (1949)
Context: What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III (27), pp.66-67
Attributed from posthumous publications

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 18.

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 140

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Context: If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?
I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institutions, property: I am in my right. I may be mistaken in the conclusion which shall result from my investigations: I am in my right. I think best to place the last thought of my book first: still am I in my right.

As quoted in Schrödinger: Life and Thought (1989) by Walter Moore