Insignificance Quotes - Page 2

• We are social animals. We like to feel a part of something of beauty and power that transcends our insignificance. It can be a religion, a political party, a ball club. Why not also Nature? I feel a strong identity with the world of living things. I was born into it; we all were. But we may not feel the ties unless we gain intimacy by seeing, feeling, smelling, touching and studying the natural world. Trying to live in harmony with the dictates of nature is probably as inspirational as living in harmony with the Koran or the Bible. Perhaps it is also a timely undertaking.

  Bernd Heinrich

  Strong, Party, Animal

  Bernd Heinrich, Alice Calaprice (1993). “One Man's Owl”, p.14, Princeton University Press

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• Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.

  Aldous Huxley

  Girl, Being In Love, Illustration

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• Death is the great adventure beside which moon landings and space trips pale in insignificance.

  Joseph Bayly

  Death, Adventure, Moon

  Joseph Bayly (1969). “The View from a Hearse: A Christian View of Death”

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• If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.

  William Hazlitt

  Reading, Intelligence, Wish

  William Hazlitt (1924). “Essays”

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• When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.

  Rollo May

  Responsibility, People, Suffering

  "Psychology and the Human Dilemma". Book by Rollo May, p. 31, 1967.

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• Retirement is a one-way trip to insignificance.

  Mason Cooley

  Retirement, Way, Retiring

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• I just wish insignificance had more stature.

  Andy Rooney

  Wish, Stature

  "Andy Rooney, a Cranky Voice of CBS, Dies at 92" by Richard Severo, Peter Keepnews, www.nytimes.com. November 5, 2011.

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• Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God… The reason for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us.

  John Piper

  Men, Space, People

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• Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance.

  Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

  Knowledge, Science, Our World

  "Alien Life Imagined: Communicating the Science and Culture of Astrobiology". Book by Mark Brake, 2012.

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• There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sadness, Passion, Men

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• How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Real, Fall, Thinking

  "On the Heights of Despair". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1934.

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• The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.

  Charles Darwin

  Men, Feet, Earthquakes

  Charles Darwin (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin (Illustrated)”, p.444, Delphi Classics

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• What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Extinction

  Ernest Becker (1985). “Escape from Evil”, Free Press

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• Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it.

  Milan Kundera

  Affliction, Bears, Should

  "Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

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• In this era of non-judgmental mush, too many Americans have become incapable of facing the brutal reality of unprovoked hatred, based on envy, resentment and ultimately on a vicious urge to lash out against others for the pain of ones own insignificance. That has been a common thread in things as disparate as ghetto riots, two world wars, and now Islamic terrorism.

  Thomas Sowell

  Pain, War, Islamic

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• There is a magnificent intensity in life that comes when we are not in control but are only reacting, living, surviving. I am not a religious man per se...but for me, to go to sea is to get a glimpse of the face of God. At sea I am reminded of my insignificance-of all men's insignificance. It is a wonderful feeling to be so humbled.

  Steven Callahan

  Religious, Men, Sea

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• There are girls, not specially beautiful, whom you could not lose in a crowd. There are other girls, apparently perfect in beauty, who seem to melt into insignificance.

  Mack Sennett

  Beautiful, Girl, Perfect

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• I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art.

  Gustave Moreau

  Art, Passion, Men

  "Gustave Moreau". Book by Jean Paladilhe and Josbe Pierrep, translated by Bettina Wadia, p. 32, 1972.

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• Our concerns sink into insignificance when compared with the eternal value of human personality - a potential child of God which is destined to triumph over lie, pain, and death. No one can take this sublime meaning of life away from us, and this is the one thing that matters.

  Igor Sikorsky

  Children, Pain, Lying

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• A celebration of insignificance, Is that all we are in the end? And one day I’ll just be one more of those faces, frozen in death and wonder

  Steven Erikson

  One Day, Faces, Frozen

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• ...boredom speaks the language of time, and it is to teach you the most valuable lesson in your life--...the lesson of your utter insignificance. It is valuable to you, as well as to those you are to rub shoulders with. 'You are finite,' time tells you in a voice of boredom, 'and whatever you do is, from my point of view, futile.' As music to your ears, this, of course, may not count; yet the sense of futility, of limited significance even of your best, most ardent actions is better than the illusion of their consequence and the attendant self-satisfaction.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Voice, Self, Views

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• As is so often the case with a legend, every incident has two possible interpretations, the plausible and the one that is molded to suit the making of the myth. Man is a romantic at heart and will always put aside dull, plodding reason for the excitement of an enigma. As Doc had pointed out, mystery, not logic, is what gives us hope and keeps us believing in a force greater than our own insignificance.

  Bryce Courtenay

  Believe, Heart, Men

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• Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits when they have them as by lacking good spirits when they are indispensable.

  Thomas Hardy

  Men, Spirit, Oblivion

  1874 Far from the Madding Crowd, ch.22.

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• If I've learned anything in twenty-nine years, it's that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift - bad choice of words - is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.

  Douglas Coupland

  Jobs, Children, Night

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• People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Religious, Rights, People

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