Best Meaning Quotes

"Happiness and meaning often people say that meaning comes from service...but then the happiness component tends to be when we have filled our own buckets first."

"You have the power to create meaning in your life rather than passively look for it."

"Life is C between B and D. B stands for Birth, D stands for Death, and C stands for Choice."

"Happiness is actually one of three factors that matter: one is happiness, the second is meaning."

"Artists are searchers for meaning, just like astronomers."

"Find meaning because you can't always find happiness; you can't always find positivity, but you can always find meaning."

"In times of challenge and change, there are key questions many share: How can we prosper and grow? Do we search for meaning or grasp for survival?"

"What gives us a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives is an attempt to create something that will outlive us when we die."

"To give our lives any sense of meaning and psychological stability, we must choose to believe certain things matter more than ourselves."

"We are fulfilled when our life has meaning, and our life has meaning when we are trying to do good for the world."

"Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds its meaning."

"It's not all about the money; it's about the journey, the struggle that brings meaning."

"Simplicity and optimizing for simplicity when it comes to what you derive your sense of meaning and happiness from in life, if you start there and then win and capture the entire world, that's a fantastic bonus on top."

"A lot of people take a good bit of meaning and pride from the work that they do. It makes them feel like they have a place in the world, like they contribute, like they're useful. It's statusful."

"Every single day for the rest of your life, undertake a deliberate learning process; that will quickly add a lot of meaning to your life."

"The real win and the real redemption is when we can make meaning out of our life and find meaning and purpose in ways that are meaningful to us."

"'Manipura' in Sanskrit literally means 'City of Jewels'."

"Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."

"Understanding meaning, purpose, and value is central to how you live your life."

"Stop chasing after meaning and start pursuing being."

"Man's search for meaning when he was in the concentration camps how do you survive when you're in a concentration camp and you're treated like an animal and he found meaning through feelings of love for his wife at the time and through knowing that his spirit could not be captured."

"While things are temporary, that doesn't mean that there's not meaningful. In fact, that can actually increase the meaning of those short times that we have with those people."

"Making meaning means that you change the world."

"Meaning and fulfillment come from the pursuit of goals that feel meaningful to us."

"The most important thing that you can apply mindfulness to is your thoughts because your thoughts construct all the meanings in your life."

"It's not necessarily about the experience but the meaning that you make of it that has an impact on you."

"Finding meaning for your suffering is everything."

"The whole point of being consciousness at all is to come to appreciate the meaning of truth, goodness, and beauty."

"We manufacture our own meaning, we manufacture our own purpose."

"You need a meaning to sustain you through the vicissitudes of life."

"Your goals should not be random; they should be designed to give you meaning and purpose."

"Meaning is the why of your life, a combination of coherence, purpose, and significance."

"Every word that Allah states in the Quran has a tremendous and deep meaning."

"If you're not contributing to the group, you will have this sense of meaninglessness."

"It is up to us to create meaning in our lives through our own freedom and decisions."

"Art is a reflection of our desire for meaning in this universe."

"We are hard wired to find meaning in struggle."

"Finding some sort of purpose for one's life can help give you meaning and fulfillment."

"Meaning is the instinct that puts you on the edge of transformation."

"The Sanchez family, despite living in a nihilistic universe, are able to find meaning in each other, helping to ground those that they love."

"A beautiful thing is not just beautiful; it's telling you something."

"Find meaning because you can't always find happiness, but you can always find meaning."

"You're going to find most of your meaning by picking up your damn load and stumbling forward."

"Every single collab I've ever done meant something to me, and I absolutely loved it."

"What we are is the creative process in the universe. For me, that's the meaning."

"Connection between responsibility and meaning: You want some meaning to set against the suffering, where are you going to find that? Well, reliably, one place to find it is in responsibility."

"We talk about what can we do to be happy, but we forget that pursuing happiness is really not the best way to get happiness. Pursuing meaning, you pursue meaning and happiness will just come."

"Meaning is more important than happiness; it puts everything else into place."

"Of course, happiness is not the point; a meaningful life is."

"All the meaning in your life is going to come as a consequence of accepting responsibility."

"If human beings can find meaning living in a concentration camp, then you certainly should be able to find meaning in the freest, most rich, most prosperous human society in the history of humanity."

"It's not the events in our lives that define us; it's the meaning we attach to those events."

"People who don't grow up don't find the sort of meaning in their life that sustains them through difficult times."

"My search for purpose, meaning, has never waned in the process."

"My relentless skepticism and my persistent desire for ultimate meaning."

"Leaning further into the truth, with the only intention to be to get further and closer to the truth, the meaning will happen."

"There is some meaning or purpose to everything that's going on."

"It's not what you do that makes it meaningful, it's who you do it for."

"We didn't invent meaning; meaning existed before us. We are accessing meaning."

"Human beings are meaning-creating creatures and thus meaning in the universe springs into existence with the creation of sentient human beings."

"Mortality offers meaning to our lives, and morality helps navigate that meaning."

"I think that a lot of the words that we've used have become so watered down that instead of them actually conveying meaning about a person, they just tell us how the author or speaker feels about that person."

"It's through the adoption of responsibility that you're most likely to encounter those meanings."

"Words are meaningless unless we put action behind them."

"Meaning is what helps you stay the course, setting it against the tragedy and the suffering."

"Responsibility, that's what gives life meaning. It's like, lift a load. Then you can tolerate yourself, right?"

"It is the fulfillment of responsibility, not its alleviation by some other agent, that provides meaning."

"There's so much you can actually go in deeper and it just tells you how much detail and how much meaning we humans can put into something as seemingly simple as a snowflake or as seemingly simple as a red berry on a branch."

"A whole generation of young people are coming up into a world and thinking about their professional trajectory in the context of meaning in a way that was not really part of the thought process of my generation."

"We need our spots, traumas, heartaches, etc., in order to live full lives that have some meaning outside of our ability to satisfy demand."

"Just because something in the big grand scheme of things is utterly meaningless doesn't mean that it isn't meaningful to us right now."

"I can't say that me helping others doesn't help me because, along the way, I'm finding meaning."

"Happiness comes from having meaning and purpose in your life and actually having friends and valuable friendships."

"I realized that the things that give our lives meaning and purpose, they vary for different people."

"People even in the most barren circumstances can still find meaning."

"Your connection with everything is what gives your life purpose and meaning."

"Numbers mean even more than we thought; they can be an expression not just of totals or ratios or patterns, but of meaning, process, and higher truths."

"Experience something as meaningful... You lose a sense of time, you lose a sense of vulnerability, you're deeply engaged."

"Ultimately meaning in life arises out of service, out of going beyond the self."

"It's something that gives the adventure a little more meaning, and sometimes, people get what they were looking for in the strangest ways."

"Virtually everything that you derive genuine meaning from... is always to be found in the adoption of responsibilities."

"One of those things that significantly contribute to job satisfaction is going to be a sense of meaning, and by that, I mean how much is the job that you're doing positively impacting the rest of the world."

"Meaning is kind of linked with job satisfaction, but in my opinion, in the long run, meaning is actually more important than passion or job satisfaction."

"Meaning is basically how your job or your career, what you do, is helping the world in your own unique way."

"There's a meaning-shaped hole in the world, and we should fill it."

"Humans need to create meaning in their lives."

"At least he gave meaning to the lives of the deceased players."

"I want to have a meaning that will sustain me even through catastrophe."

"True meaning is found in voluntary self-sacrifice."

"Music is meaningful, and you can't argue the meaning away. It's invulnerable to criticism."

"Dictionaries are not authorities on what words mean; they describe how words are used."

"Consequences, after all, are how we find meaning, both good and bad."

"Words have power, the right words change what things mean to us."

"Life is hard enough so that if you don't find your way forward to a meaningful engagement, you will become corrupted."

"Pursuing things that are meaningful is more important than not worrying or being happy."

"Her life was just so fully loved and fully lived and absolutely abundant with meaning."

"We're all really just struggling against a harsh and often painful world, but one that also has beauty and meaning."

"It's the lesson of contribution which makes life so meaningful."

"How can we derive meaning from a fundamentally meaningless world?"

"The only real source of meaning is in how you relate to the only other thing that can understand where you're coming from: other people."

"The world might still be pointless and bad things still might happen, but by deriving a fluid, externally derived meaning in other people, that suffering can instead inform our understanding of the world rather than jeopardize it."

"Suffering is no longer suffering when it finds a meaning."

"There needs to be some common thing that is evoked in the mind between two people when a word is mentioned for that word to have meaning."

"The meaning that sustains you and protects you from corruption during suffering is to be found in responsibility."

"In order to find out what a word means, you don't look up the definition; you look up the etymology."

"Relationships are the ocean in which we find meaning."

"All art is always contextual; it always carries meaning."

"The busyness does not make our lives meaningful. It is the interior life that makes the greatest difference to us in the end."

"There is nothing as important as meaning, other than food, to sustain a human being."

"When tragedy strikes, if life is to have meaning, some good must result from the tragedy."

"Personal agency is fundamental to the cosmos and it opens up the possibility that there could be a good answer to that question of meaning and purpose."

"I think it's incredibly important for those who believe that nothing matters, who can't understand and accept why terrible things happen in the world, to start to explore the writings of existential philosophers."

"Meaning is what's going to empower you. Mental strength based on motivation will not last long; mental strength based on meaning will."

"The reason that you have kids is not for personal happiness...We do things every day that don't give us happiness but give us meaning, fulfillment, and purpose."

"The implicit promise of the story is that these things will add up to something; there will be some coherent meaning behind all this talk and blood."

"Everything has no built-in meaning other than the meaning you give it."

"Watching Roshi and Goku battle isn't so satisfying because of the actual choreography...but instead because of their investment and the meaning behind the fight."

"I've always wanted my life to mean something, to be important."

"The point is, what if you were immortal? You wouldn't need to worry about not having enough time, but if you knew your life would go on forever, would those high points still feel as meaningful or unique?"

"The meaning that you choose to create is an expression of who you truly are as a human being."

"It is more noble for us to find meaning and purpose on our own rather than accepting it from an external source or power."

"The quality of our life is made up by the quality of our emotions, and our emotions come from meaning."

"It's not the events of our life that define us, it's the meaning we attach to those events."

"The key to a happier life is not the different events of our lives that happen to us; it's the meaning we attach to those events."

"People don't create their own meanings; you either feel that there is meaning that is discoverable out there in the universe, and that is your job to go find it."

"People need a vision of what life is supposed to be and what meaning is supposed to constitute."

"We all want a life of meaning. And you build that meaning into your life by the commitments that you make."

"All spirituality means really is that you feel connected to something greater than yourself."

"You're going to end up spending more time at [work] than with your kids... you better figure out a way for work to have deeper meaning."

"Meaning is the thrill of personal evolution."

"You need a meaning to offset the tragedy of life; otherwise, you just suffer stupidly and you tend to make people around you suffer the same way."

"The meaning in life that gives you fulfillment and that engages you in existence and the willingness to shoulder as much individual responsibility as you can possibly handle, those are the same things."

"The price that you pay for the meaning that transcends tragedy is the adoption of responsibility for the catastrophe of existence."

"This was a human being that had intrinsic meaning to the world, even if she hadn't found what that meaning exactly was."

"Responsibility. That's what gives life meaning."

"Our society would look so different if we didn't chase happiness all the time, but rather we chased meaning."

"Life is meaningless; it has no built-in meaning. We give it meaning, and that's how we experience it."

"These flowers are the only meaning left in my entire life."

"Surrealism doesn't always have to mean something, as often it's used to undermine and confuse our rational impulse to project meaning onto everything."

"Remember to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

"The meaning that overcomes pain is more real than the pain."

"You know, I think punk rock means something. It's not just the two fingers to the establishment."

"Genuine and sustaining meaning can be found in a task well and faithfully undertaken."

"I think broad strokes, we're so hungry for purpose and meaning and identity, and yet we're starving for that."

"The meaning of life to me is the struggle to impart meaning to meaning."

"It's who you COULD be that imbues your life with meaning. It's not the only thing--I mean, you have your friends and your family--but they expect something from you too."

"Our ability to create meaning and beauty in the mundane, in the absurd."

"There's a great opportunity for you...most people find the meaning that sustains them through the vicissitudes of life not in happiness but in responsibility."

"No, you need a meaning to sustain you through suffering."

"You need a meaning in your life to buttress yourself against the tragedy and the malevolence."

"You have a natural human need to seek meaning in your life."

"Life is inherently meaningless, but this is a wonderful opportunity because you can be the kind of person that you want."

"You can't ensure that the meaning you experience is self-determined, but you can play your role to the best of your ability."

"If you want to find meaning in your life without having children, optimize your functioning along the dimensions that are left to you."

"Life can be meaningful enough to justify its suffering."

"If you're suffering, you are obligated, in a sense, to hold on to whatever rope someone throws you. Life can be meaningful enough to justify its suffering."

"Life is hard. It's tainted by malevolence and betrayal that can make you bitter. You need a meaning to offset that."

"Where's the meaning to be found? Not in rights, not in impulsive pleasure, but in responsibility."

"Consciousness is really the only thing that matters. It's what gives our lives meaning and value."

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering."

"You find something that gives you meaning and focus and a beautiful philosophy to change the way you think, and you adopt it wholeheartedly."

"You've got to have mission focus. There's got to be meaning in your life, fulfillment."

"Every one of your dreams is carrying a meaning."

"Life is suffering, and the consequence of that is that you need a sustaining meaning to help you avoid bitterness."

"We don't deal well with random and we desperately want to give things meaning instead."

"In the resounding echoes of the apocalypse, there lies a message, a call to repentance, a plea for understanding, and a reminder of the enduring power of faith in times of uncertainty."

"Doing things that don't make you happy... like being a caretaker for my parents... it wasn't fun at all... but it made me feel better about myself, about the world. Like this is doing something more deeply meaningful."

"The most sustaining meaning can be found in the adoption of voluntary responsibilities."

"The lack of meaning is probably a better predictor of whether you're going to make solid decisions in your personal life than whether you earn a lot of money."

"What we need are serious, meaningful relationships—honest social and romantic relationships that mean a lot to the people who are having them."

"The purpose of life, as far as I can tell... is to find a mode of being that's so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant."

"In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of sacrifice… That is why man is even ready to suffer, on the condition, to be sure, that his suffering has a meaning."

"We have to engage the public, to speak the language that people speak. People want to know about meaning, about their role in the universe."

"If none of this means anything for those of us that don't believe in a higher power, then we get to choose what it means."

"Does your interpretation remain the same? Or is it now deemed meaningless because the creator had no meaning when creating it?"

"Jung's belief was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning."

"Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality."

"Events are meaningful coincidences if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related."

"We need to be part of a story that has some crisis to be able to overcome to make it meaningful."

"Just because something is different and just because something is something other people aren't saying doesn't mean it's meaningful."

"Life has the meaning that you imbue it with."

"Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning."

"Poetry is about the manipulation and subjectivity of sound, giving a line a dozen meanings by using a word or sound that has a dozen denotations."

"Lone Pine has now taken on a meaning that has nothing to do with a lone pine."

"My middle name, Muata, is Swahili and it means 'he seeks the truth'. My first name, Hakeem, means some form of 'wise'. And my last name, Oluseyi, means 'God has done this'."

"It doesn't matter what something, or someone for that matter, used to be or mean; it's what it means to you."

"You have to wonder whether Jordan Peterson is a problem not because of his views on identity and identity politics, but because he has a deep reverence for meaning, passion, and standing up for what you believe."

"You're going to find the meaning in your life by adopting maximal responsibility."

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

"To suffer is to find some meaning in the suffering. -Friedrich Nietzsche"

"The story of meaning through responsibility is a better story."

"In any moment of life, in any moment of suffering, you always have to find an empowering meaning, an empowering purpose."

"The act of searching for hope, to try and find it, that's by itself the true meaning of hope."

"I haven't had to make myself desire writing... but when you think about how you make meaning in life beyond just your work, you have to keep finding new ways to light this fire of desire."

"Depression is like a crisis of meaning. The worst thing about depression is not about being miserable; it's having a life that seems utterly meaningless."

"This video is about one thing: It's about the way that art is interpreted and about how it's given meaning."

"Interpreting Jack Chick's artwork is a lot like looking at a Pollock painting. To a lot of people, it just looks like splashes, but there is meaning there."

"There comes a point when you really need to ask yourself what kind of life do you actually want? Do you want to live in a consequence-free, zero-gravity world, slowly losing your ability to stand on your own, or will you accept responsibility for your life and the consequences of your decisions, good and bad, finding meaning in the process?"

"Everything you see in front of you is just the skin, it's just a cover. There's a reality behind it, there's an engine behind, there's a purpose and meaning behind it."

"We bring meaning onto things, and that meaning can be very different depending on who is interpreting it."