Quotes about meaning
page 18

“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to the pain-body's attack. "Unconscious," the way that I use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the watcher.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

Source: The Power of Now (1997), p. 29-30

Pain, Anger, Thinking, Way

“Instead of "watching the thinker," you can also create a gap in the mind stream simply by directing the focus of your attention into the Now. Just become intensely conscious of the present moment. This is a deeply satisfying thing to do. In this way, you draw consciousness away from mind activity and create a gap of no-mind in which you are highly alert and aware but not thinking. This is the essence of meditation. In your everyday life, you can practice this by taking any routine activity that normally is only a means to an end and giving it your fullest attention, so that it becomes an end in itself.”

Eckhart Tolle book The Power of Now

The Power of Now (1997)

Way, Life, Drawing, Thinking

“Political Economy regards the proletarian … like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. … (1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor? (2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or — like Proudhon — see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution?.”

Karl Marx book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Source: First Manuscript – Wages of Labour, p. 6.
Source: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Religion, Time, Law, Horse

“To say that it ‘unconstitutional’ to outlaw and prosecute such a movement is merely to admit that democracies can devise no legal means to protect themselves.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 10

Democracy

“The development of fixed capital indicates in still another respect the degree of development of wealth generally, or of capital…
The creation of a large quantity of disposable time apart from necessary labour time for society generally and each of its members (i.e. room for the development of the individuals’ full productive forces, hence those of society also), this creation of not-labour time appears in the stage of capital, as of all earlier ones, as not-labour time, free time, for a few. What capital adds is that it increases the surplus labour time of the mass by all the means of art and science, because its wealth consists directly in the appropriation of surplus labour time; since value directly its purpose, not use value. It is thus, despite itself, instrumental in creating the means of social disposable time, in order to reduce labour time for the whole society to a diminishing minimum, and thus to free everyone’s time for their own development. But its tendency always, on the one side, to create disposable time, on the other, to convert it into surplus labour...
The mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. Once they have done so – and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side, necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual, and, on the other, the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that, even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all, disposable time will grow for all. For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. Labour time as the measure of value posits wealth itself as founded on poverty, and disposable time as existing in and because of the antithesis to surplus labour time; or, the positing of an individual’s entire time as labour time, and his degradation therefore to mere worker, subsumption under labour. The most developed machinery thus forces the worker to work longer than the savage does, or than he himself did with the simplest, crudest tools.”

Karl Marx book Grundrisse

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, pp. 628–629.

Time, Wealth, Art, Appearance

“Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence. At the best its place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results, abstractions which arise from the observation of the historical development of men. Viewed apart from real history, these abstractions have in themselves no value whatsoever. They can only serve to facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history. On the contrary, our difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement — the real depiction — of our historical material, whether of a past epoch or of the present.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: The German Ideology (1845-1846), Vol. I, Part 1, [The Materialist Conception of History].

History, Past, Knowledge, Reality

“We can change our future, but we cannot escape our destiny. That is why life is a journey, not a destination. All roads lead to Rome, but our actions and inaction determine the meaning of our life regardless of the outcome.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

LinkedIn (January 2021)

Future, Life, Change

“When we say "War is over if you want it," we mean that if everyone demanded peace instead of another TV set, we'd have peace.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

During the Bed-In for Peace in Montreal, Canada (1 June 1969)

War, Peace

“We Shall Naturally look round in vain the macrophysical world for acausal events, for the simple reason that we cannot imagine events that are connected non-causally and are capable of a non-causal explanation. But that does not mean that such events do not exist… The so-called "scientific view of the world" based on this can hardly be anything more than a psychologically biased partial view which misses out all those by no means unimportant aspects that cannot be grasped statistically.”

C.G. Jung book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle

Source: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 5

World, Imagination, Nature

“Listen to the words people say in their lyrics, and tell me, if that's some real shit, if that's real to you, you know what I mean. Listen to what they sayin', don't just bob your head to the beat, peep the game, and listen to what Im saying. Hold us accountable for it.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

1990s, Prison interviews and interrogations (1995)

Game, People

“I'm known as a survivor now, I hope so, for the jail thing, bullets and everything, controversies and everything, I hope so. And I want to be in the future known as somebody. You know I want people to be talking about me like you know: "remember when he was real bad, remember when Tupac was real bad". You know what I mean, they do that about a lot of actors now, like John Travolta I read stories like "remember you were wild."”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

And all these other people, and now they're like sweet hearts. We all should get that chance, I just want my chance.
1990s, MTV interview with Tabitha Soren (1995)

Reading, Bad luck, Future, People

“What I want you to take seriously, is what we have to do for the youth. Because we're coming up in a totally different world. This is not the same world that you had this is not 6th Street its not. You grew up, we grew up B. C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? We did not grow up without parents. You had parents that told you this and that and told you what went on back in the day. You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product. You understand what I'm saying? So that means it's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of "these children". It hurts that I got to, it bothers me, not hurts, that I have to sidestep my youth to stand up and do some shit that somebody else is suppose to be doing. You understand what I'm saying? There's too many men out here for me to be doing this, because it ain't my turn yet. I'm supposed to be following behind him getting the knowledge. I don't even got a chance to get the fucking knowledge. I can't go to college. There's too much problems out here. I don't got the money. Nobody does. You understand what I'm saying? So what I'm saying is, it's not as easy as we're mapping it out to be. We've got to stay real. Before we can be new African we've gotta be black first. You understand? We've gotta get our brothers from the streets like Harriett Tubman did. Why can't we look at that and see exactly what she was doing? Like Malcolm did, the real Malcolm, before the Nation of Islam. You've got to remember, this was a pimp. You know what I'm saying, we forgot about all that. In our strive to be enlightened we forgot about all our brothers in the street, about all our dope dealers, our pushers and our pimps, and that's who's teaching the new generation, because y'all not doing it. I'm sorry. But, it's the pimps and pushers who's teaching us. So, if you got a problem with how we were raised, its because they was the only ones who could do it. They the only ones who did it, because everybody else wanted to go to college, and you know, yeah everything's changed, they were the ones telling you 'the white man ain't shit, there you go, check this out young blood, you take this product, you switch it, you get money and that's how you beat the white man, you get money, you get the hell up out of here.'”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Nobody else did that. So I don't wanna hear shit about nobody telling me who I can't love and respect until you start doing what they did. To me, this is Mecca. This is the black family. You know what I'm saying? But, what makes it that much sadder, what makes me wanna cry, is that when I leave this place, so does Mecca. You understand what I'm saying? We're going back to the real deal. Right out there, you're going see the same sisters and Brenda, they're right out there, and y'all are going to get in your cars and drive the fuck home.
1990s, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Atlanta (1992)

Money, Home, Hurt, Hell

“Every created thing in the whole universe is but a door leading into His knowledge, a sign of His sovereignty, a revelation of His names, a symbol of His majesty, a token of His power, a means of admittance into His straight Path…”

Bahá'u'lláh (1817–1892) founder of the Bahá'í Faith

Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh

Universe, Knowledge

“The forces of men’s material and perceptual violence mold Woman to dependence upon Man, in every meaning of 'dependence': contingent upon; conditional upon; necessitated by; defined in terms of; incomplete or unreal without; requiring the support or assistance of; being a subordinate part of; being an appurtenance to.”

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 77

Support, Men, Parting, Dependency

“Western philosophy and science have for the most part been committed to the Simplicity Theory of Truth: the simplest theory that accounts for the data is the true theory. (Theories are simplest which postulate the fewest entities, require the fewest hypotheses, generate predictions by the fewest calculations, etc.) ...If someone believes that the world is made for him to have dominion over and he is made to exploit it, he must believe that he and the world are so made that he can, at least in principle, achieve and maintain dominion over everything. But you can’t put things to use if you don’t know how they work. So he must believe that he can, at least in principle, understand everything. If the world exists for man, it must be usably intelligible, which means it must be simple enough for him to understand. A usable universe is an intelligible universe is a simple universe. ...And so it goes with the philosophy and the science of The Arrogant Eye.”

Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality

Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 71

Understanding, Intelligence, Universe, Truth

“Stand up for what you believe in even if it means you stand alone. Speak the truth even if your voice shakes. Never regret doing the right thing no matter what the cost may be.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

“It is maintained by some that the bank is a means of executing the constitutional power “to coin money and regulate the value thereof.””

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

Congress have established a mint to coin money and passed laws to regulate the value thereof. The money so coined, with its value so regulated, and such foreign coins as Congress may adopt are the only currency known to the Constitution. But if they have other power to regulate the currency, it was conferred to be exercised by themselves, and not to be transferred to a corporation. If the bank be established for that purpose, with a charter unalterable without its consent, Congress have parted with their power for a term of years, during which the Constitution is a dead letter. It is neither necessary nor proper to transfer its legislative power to such a bank, and therefore unconstitutional. Often paraphrased as: If Congress has the right under the constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to be used by themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations. 1830s Source: Veto Message Regarding the Bank of the United States http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajveto01.asp (10 July 1832)

Money

“[T]here are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. 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.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"The Art of Living", interview with journalist Gordon Young first published in 1960 Source: Reprinted in C. G. Jung Speaking, ed. McGuire and Hull, pp. 451-452. link to Internet Archive https://archive.org/stream/MemoriesDreamsReflectionsCarlJung/carlgustavjung-interviewsandencounters-110821120821-phpapp02#page/n237/mode/2up

Night, Happiness, Sadness, Life

“Give to all the children, from their birth, the same means of maintenance, education, and instruction; give then to all the men thus raised the same social milieu, the same means of earning their living by their own labor, and you will see then that many of these differences, that we believe to be natural differences, will disappear because they are nothing but the effect of an unequal division of the conditions of intellectual and physical development — of the conditions of life.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Second Address to the Second Congress of Peace and Freedom (1868)

Birth, Men, Education, Life

“Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve. Often, without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reaction – an enemy of the revolution, i.e., the emancipation of nations and men.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)

Country, Idea, Intelligence, People

“Rights are, then, the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law—no rights contrary to the law—no rights anterior to the law. Before the existence of laws there may be reasons for wishing that there were laws—and doubtless such reasons cannot be wanting, and those of the strongest kind;—but a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, does not constitute a right. To confound the existence of a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, with the existence of the right itself, is to confound the existence of a want with the means of relieving it. It is the same as if one should say, everybody is subject to hunger, therefore everybody has something to eat.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

Pannomial Fragments (c. 1831), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. III (1838), p. 221

Hunger, Law

“"The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default.”

Greg McKeown (author) book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Popular Quotes, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Way

“First of all, we must cooperate with sincerity. When there are difficulties, that means we have done something others cannot and proves our value.”

Ren Zhengfei (1944) Chinese businessman

Speech at Huawei’s internal online forum (June 26, 2021)

Sincerity

“When words stop meaning anything, when truth doesn’t matter, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can’t work.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Speech at political rally on November 2, 2018. Source: Obama rips hecklers: Why are the people who won the last election ‘so mad all the time?' https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/11/03/obama-rips-hecklers-why-are-people-who-won-last-election-so-mad-all-time/ 2018

Democracy, People, Truth, Lie

“Love for life — love for people, above all respect for their values and traditions, and for everything that can give deep meaning to it.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

People, Life, Love

“Humanism gains genuine meaning only when people's freedom is dedicated to every single human life.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Freedom, Life, People

“A human being is a flower that originates miraculously amidst a cosmic desert, capable of becoming a blossoming universal tree if we recognize this meaning and sincerely desire to.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Tree, Universe, Flowers, Sincerity

“A life-creating ability is what gives meaning to human ideals and aspirations for their embodiment!”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life

“Looking back, it's like, wow, those few minutes just made such an impact. We have that much time to kind of prove yourself. I think that's one thing that makes skating so exciting, because it's just intense, and it's quick, and one little slip can mean the difference between placing or not placing.”

Kristi Yamaguchi (1971) American figure skater

"Kristi Yamaguchi looks back on 1992 Olympic gold, talks Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan" in TODAY https://www.today.com/news/kristi-yamaguchi-looks-back-1992-olympic-gold-talks-tonya-harding-t122373 (6 February 2018)

Time, Thinking

“Freedom is sweeter than peace. Meaning, every country that has a prime minister without a president as the head of the state; has got peace but not freedom. Their sovereignty is nothing but an illusion.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Peace, Country, Freedom

“My friend (s), I'm not an atheist like you. In fact, I'm a theist. Meaning, I do believe in One Living God!”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God

“You can see the beauty in things only after learning the meaning of the word 'beautiful'.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Beauty, Learning

“You must create your own path if you wish to become successful in life. Meaning, you must seek for success where you believe it can't be found and not where many individuals claim it's found.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Success, Life

“Money is a neutral thing. It means that it can be the main source of your miseries or your happiness. In the wrong hands, it is only harmful, but beneficial in the right hands.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Money, Happiness

“The true meaning of kindness reveals itself to us whenever we do a very kind act.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“When you start to doubt, it means that the solution is no longer far from you. Just don't overthink it.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Compatibility means deliberately repeating other people's mistakes.”

David Wheeler (computer scientist) (1927–2004) British computer scientist

Trust, Complexity and Control: Confidence in a Convergent World, Cofta, Piotr, 2007-09-27, John Wiley & Sons, 9780470517840, en https://books.google.com/books?id=xRLqGKY8axwC&q=compatibility+is+deliberately+repeating+the+mistakes+of+others&pg=PA73,

People

“The beauty of the sacred is a symbol or a foretaste of, and sometimes a means for, the joy that God alone procures.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 38, 978-1-93659700-0]
God, Beauty

God, Beauty, Joy

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo's Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
Misattributed

Life, Life

“Conservation means freezing in the dark.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

[David Suzuki's Green Guide, David Suzuki, David R. Boyd, https://books.google.com/books/about/David_Suzuki_s_Green_Guide.html?id=FgGcvxC0YpkC, Chapter 2: Home Smart Home, 2009] and elsewhere
Attributed

“[P]leasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.”

Jeremy Bentham book An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

Source: An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789; 1823), Ch. 10: Of Motives

Pain, Pleasure, Evil

“Although the world is quiet, it does not mean that everything is going well. It can also mean that everyone is praying to God to make their tomorrow better, waiting for the situation to change, so that life becomes happy as before.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

God, Happiness, World, Change

“If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?
I mean I write poems in these songs dedicated to you
When you're in the mood for empathy, there's blood in my pen
Better yet where your friends and them?”

Kendrick Lamar (1987) American rapper, songwriter and record producer from California

Poetic Justice.
Source: Song lyrics, good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012)

Flowers, Mood

“The multi-dimensional aspects of water are amazing. Water contains within itself the knowing or the memory of anything it comes into contact with. This means it carries the knowing and the memory of a place and the happenings there, going back sometimes thousands of years. It is full of information… Sort of like a mirror that keeps the reflection of anything it has ever encountered.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Source: tealswan.com/quotes

Water, Memory

“Investing in education means helping children and young people to discover and appreciate the most important values and to have the courage to look to their future with hope.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2020s, 2021

Children, People, Education, Courage

“There can be no revolution without widespread and passionate destruction, a destruction salutary and fruitful precisely because out of it, and by means of it alone, new worlds are born and arise.”

Mikhail Bakunin book Statism and Anarchy

Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873)

World, Passion

“The wholeness of life becomes fragmented through our thinking. Yet the totality of life has brought this event about. It is part of the web of interconnectedness that is the cosmos. This means whatever is could not be otherwise.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 10

Life, Thinking, Parting

“To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003)

Tree, Animals, Thinking

“"No self, no problem,” said the Buddhist master when asked to explain the deeper meaning of Buddhism.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003)

Problem

“A moment of danger can bring about a temporary cessation of the stream of thinking and thus give you a taste of what it means to be present, alert, aware.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 2

Thinking

“Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: "Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.

Housing, Life, Money, Way

“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.

Education, School

“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Chapter II The Vigor of Life http://www.bartleby.com/55/2.html 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)

Horse

“My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) … the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Source: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981), No. 52: To his son Christopher Tolkien (29 November, 1943)

Men

“A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.”

Mikhail Bakunin book Statism and Anarchy

Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873), "Appendix A"

Personality, Strong, People, Truth

“To let go of judgment does not mean that you don’t see what they do. It means that you recognize their behavior as a form of conditioning, and you see it and accept it as that. You don’t construct an identity out of it for that person.
That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. The ego then no longer runs your relationships.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 8

Personality, Behavior

“The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: “All things are intrinsically one.” That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 2

Truth, Understanding, Feeling

“Struggling for freedom means crushing any form of the holiness halo.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Freedom

“Just because you are having a nasty day, does not mean you live a grim life!

What keeps us going and determined is optimism – the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Optimism, Beauty, Life

“I have learned that…
you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them.
No matter how much I care, some people just don't care back.
It takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.
It's not what you have in your life, but who you have in your life that counts.
You can do something in an instant that will give you a heartache for life.
No matter how thin you slice it, there are always two sides.
You should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.
We are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.
There are people who love you dearly, but just don't know how to show it.
True friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. The same goes for true love.
Just because someone doesnt love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
Maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.
No matter how good a friend someone is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.
No matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.
Just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other. And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.
We don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.
You shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever.
There are so many ways of falling and staying in love.
No matter how many friends you have, if you are their pillar, you will feel lonely and lost at the times you need them most.
The people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon.
Although the word "love" can have many different meanings, it loses value when overly used.
Love is not for me to keep, but to pass on to the next person I see.
There are people who love you dearly but just don't know how to show it.
Every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love that human touch-holding hands, a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.
I still have a lot to learn……”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Hurt, Personality, Love, Life

“You are not very creative
if
you have to live within your means!”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“Failure does not mean you are a failure… it just means you have not succeeded…yet.
Motivation,
Drive,
Willingness,
Practice,
Fearlessness,
Tirelessness,
Focus,
Persistance,
Competitiveness
and
Ability to see things from Both Sides,
will be your
Stepping Stones
to becoming
Triumphant.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Motivation, Failure

“A good work of fiction is more real than the stories from which it was derived. Otherwise it has no staying power. It's distilled reality. And some would say "it never happened," but it depends on what you mean by "happened."”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

If it's a pattern that repeats in many, many places, with variation, you can abstract out the central pattern. So the pattern never purely existed in any specific form, but the fact that you pulled a pattern out from all those exemplars means that you've extracted something real. I think the reason that the story of Adam and Eve has been immune to being forgotten is because it says things about the nature of the human condition that are always true.
Other

Dependency, Reality

“For the dream chaser:
Everyone is a dream chaser. It never means every dream that can come true.
I always admire for the one who has dreams.
He follows it and he can make it real.”

Kazeronnie Mak

Dreams

“Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses. Poets are the policemen of language; they are always arresting those old reprobates the words.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Letter to Ellen O'Leary (3 February 1889)

Sense

“There is a high goal, a mountain peak, a star that shines in the darkness, beckoning above the horizon. Its mere existence gives you hope—and that is the meaning without which you cannot live.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 133

Mountain, Star, Hope

“Within the dark forest of life, I encountered a soul who had adopted suffering as a way of life. I met her there once on a mission to seek meaning. I was close to loving her until I realized, no one could ever extinguish the fire. Innately, she was the torch that always burned.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1995

Soul, Suffering, Way, Love

“The fastest and most efficient means of establishing a quick working relationship is to acknowledge the negative and diffuse it.”

Chris Voss book Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It

“(NEVER GIVE UP) " Been born on the wrong side of the track does not mean your birth place will be a permanent address. " -Engr. Abah Sule”

Engr.Abah Sule

Birth

“The meaning of life of a humankind is the integrity of its unity, enlightenment, and long-term stability for the sake of everyone's happiness.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life, Happiness

“The genetic expression within any given cell at any given time is not “fixed,” as many people think it is. It is not a static thing. Rather, it is continually adapting to both external and internal stimuli – meaning that it adjusts to the environment and to any changes in the surroundings, as well as to any changes within the body itself.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

People, Change, Time, Thinking

“You are deeply loved by God. Do you know that? I mean, do you really know that? Because if you do, you will move through life without fear. You will know that only Perfection can occur.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God, Life, Perfection, Love

“To understand the importance of not touching a person who does not want us, to realise that it is not right to deceive someone who does not belong to us, but only out of selfishness, for the pleasure of it or for pure satisfaction is not for everyone. And above all, it means loving and respecting human worth.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Capire l'importanza di non toccare una persona che non ci voglia, rendersi conto che non sia giusto illudere qualcuno che non ci appartenga, ma solo per egoismo, per il piacere di farlo o per pura soddisfazione non è da tutti. E soprattutto, significa amare e rispettare il valore umano.
Source: prevale.net

Pleasure, Selfishness, Understanding, Love

“You've got to say what you mean and mean what you say… Doubt in your voice is an open door people will shove right through.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

People

“Words were so puzzling. should mean a present just asshould mean to stick tacks in people.”

Beverly Cleary book Ramona the Pest

Source: Ramona the Pest

People

“I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Life, Death, World

“It is not what we get. But who we become, what
we contribute… that gives meaning to our lives.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

“Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Hope, Forgiveness, Past

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Page 15

Life

“A hero sacrifices for the greater good. A hero is true to his or her conscience. In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: A World Without Heroes

“Fate is a ladder on which you cannot afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one step would mean you'll never make it to the top.”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Fate

“… free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.”

Flannery O’Connor book Wise Blood

Source: Wise Blood

Freedom

“The point is, Sin is now going to try to overthrow me again and take my place. Do you know what that means? (Artemis)
There will be much rejoicing? (Kat)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Devil May Cry

“When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“She said, "Do you have more things that you need, or more that you don't need?" I said, "It depends on what it means to need.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Dependency

“Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Art and Lies

Angels, Light

“You have to let yourself be fully present in every moment. Just be awake for it, do you know what I mean? Go all in and wring every last drop out of the experience.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

“The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Source: On Heroes, Hero Worship and the Heroic in History

“Leo,” Jason said, “you’re weird.”
“Yeah, you tell me that a lot.” Leo grinned. “But if you don’t remember me, that means I can reuse all my old jokes…!”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: Leo. Jason said, you're wierd. Yeah, you tell me that a lot. Leo grinned. But if you don't remember me, that means I can reuse all my old jokes. Come on!
Source: The Lost Hero

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Variant: It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“To be loved means to be recognized as existing.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: Old Path White Clouds: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha

Love

“Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.”

Thomas Bernhard book Correction

Source: Correction

“I just read them for fun."
"Dictionaries?"
"Yes."
"That doesn't sound like fun. That sounds awful."
"Awful used to mean 'full of awe.' The same meaning as awesome. I learned that from a dictionary."
He blinked.
"See?" She said. "Fun.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

Source: Lexicon

Learning, Reading

“Even the stove and the refrigerator looked human, I mean good human - they seemed to have arms and voices and they said, hang around, kid, it's good here, it can be very good here.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories

“What did that mean? Where could it go? He was a death diety. I was a high school senior.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Source: Abandon

Death, School

“Beauty means the scent of roses and then the death of roses”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Death, Beauty

“If you stare long enough at anything, you will start to find similarities. The word “coincidence” exists in order to stop people from seeing meaning where none exists.”

Chuck Klosterman Eating the Dinosaur

Source: Eating the Dinosaur

People

“You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter II
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Context: A man’ s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.

God, Evil

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States

Knowledge, Thinking, Reading

“Just because you feel fear doesn't mean you can't do it. Do it afraid”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Fear, Feeling

Quotes about meaning page 18

Quotes about meaning
page 18