Meaningless Quotes - Page 20

• Bob Dylan continues to release odd and unsettling records, and to do odd and unsettling things on stage. So the term "still" seems meaningless to me. But the real answer is simple: I listen to Bob Dylan for pleasure more than I listen to anyone else for pleasure.

  Greil Marcus

  Real, Simple, Records

  "This is Greil Marcus’ Brain on 'Shuffle'". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. October 18, 2010.

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• Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

  Thomas Nagel

  May, Absurd, Meaningless Life

  Thomas Nagel (1987). “What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy”, p.82, Oxford University Press

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• I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.

  Hari Kunzru

  Writing, Good Day, Noble

  "'I'm the bloke who got the big advance'". Interview with Rachel Cooke, www.theguardian.com. May 15, 2004.

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• At birth man is offered only one choice --the choice of his death. But if this choice is governed by distaste for his own existence, his life will never have been more than meaningless.

  Jean-Pierre Melville

  Death, Men, Choices

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• The burning conviction that we have a holy duty towards others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like a giving hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless.

  Eric Hoffer

  Self Esteem, Humility, Hands

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Commitment is not a barrier to freedom. Commitment is the *exercise* of freedom, the act of making a choice or decision and meaning it. The one without the other is meaningless.

  Michael Rosen

  Commitment, Exercise, Choices

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• If we can't make and keep commitments to ourselves as well as to others, our commitments become meaningless.

  Stephen Covey

  Commitment, Wells, Ifs

  Stephen R. Covey (1992). “Principle Centered Leadership”, p.61, Simon and Schuster

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• When art seems to be empty of meaning, as no doubt some of the abstract painting of our own day actually does seem, what the painting says, indeed what the artist is shrieking at the top of his voice, is that life has become empty of all rational content and coherence, and that, in times like these, is far from a meaningless statement.

  Lewis Mumford

  Art, Times Like These, Voice

  Lewis Mumford (2000). “Art and Technics”, p.21, Columbia University Press

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• Virtue is not a chemical product...it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key.

  Lewis Mumford

  Mean, Keys, Literature

  "Values for Survival". Essay by Lewis Mumford, 1946.

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• I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.

  Roger Ebert

  Prayer, Flower, Smell

  Roger Ebert (2011). “Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2012”, p.713, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• People's creativity is very much alive, but when they get paid for their creativity, they often experience that as rather meaningless. Money as the reward for their creative process is very one-dimensional, a tremendous comedown.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Creativity, People, Creative

  Chogyam Trungpa (2011). “Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness”, p.155, Shambhala Publications

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• The appearances of natural objects are in themselves meaningless; the essential thing is feeling - in itself and completely independent of the context in which it has been evoked.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Independent, Feelings, Essentials

  'Artists on Art; from the 14th - 20th centuries', ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 451, 1927.

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• For the Suprematist, the proper means is the one that provides the fullest expression of pure feeling and ignores the habitually accepted object. The object in itself is meaningless to him, and the ideas of the conscious mind are worthless.

  Kazimir Malevich

  Mean, Expression, Ideas

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• Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and which contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Theory, Illogical

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• The baseline is the same. Is Iran going to suspend enrichment activity? Is Iran going to return to the negotiations? Or is Iran going to continue, as we think they have, to stall and prevaricate and extend things in a meaningless way in order to avoid censure.

  Joseph Adam Ereli

  Thinking, Iran, Order

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• I think we live in an era of problems that, if you step back and look at them globally, can't be solved. One response to that is, "Oh well, it's all hopeless. The natural world is getting wrecked, birds are disappearing, the planet is warming and so anything we might do on a smaller scale is meaningless."

  Jonathan Franzen

  Thinking, Bird, Looks

  "Exclusive: Jonathan Franzen sounds off on bird poaching, climate change and “performing love”". Interview with LIindsay Abrams, www.salon.com. April 27, 2015.

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• The Atonement of Jesus Christ outweighs, surpasses, and transcends every other mortal event, every new discovery, and every acquisition of knowledge, for without the Atonement all else in life is meaningless.

  Tad R. Callister

  Jesus, Discovery, Events

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• Your job is not done when you have determined your goal. You must also plan for and determine how it is to be accomplished. Goals and plans are meaningless if they cannot be executed successfully!

  Gary Ryan

  Jobs, Goal, Done

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• It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.We all save it every day, and we all destroy it -- in our own small ways -- by every choice we make and every tiniest action resulting from that choice.The next time you feel useless and impotent, remember what you are in fact doing in this very moment. And then observe your tiny, seemingly meaningless acts and choices coalesce and cascade together into a powerful positive whole.The world -- if it could -- will thank you for it.And if it does not... well, a true heroine or hero does not require it.

  Vera Nazarian

  Powerful, Hero, Choices

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• Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Men, Limits, Pilgrimage

  "History as a System". Book by Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1962.

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• It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.

  Donald A. Norman

  People, Design, Arbitrary

  Donald A. Norman (2013). “The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition”, p.16, Basic Books

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• In short, competition has to shoulder the responsibility of explaining all the meaningless ideas of the economists, whereas it should rather be the economists who explain competition.

  Karl Marx

  Responsibility, Ideas, Competition

  Karl Marx (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works”

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• life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; ... it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.

  Alan Alda

  Life Is, Existence

  Commencement Speech at Connecticut College, www.graduationwisdom.com. 1980.

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• Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Art, Clever, Mean

  "Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Three (April 23, 1903), 1929.

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• Letters are meaningless unless put together correctly. Words are worthless unless backed by truth. Sentences are handed out and judged accordingly, but only genuinely honest men or women can create writings that change the world forever.

  Paul Morabito

  Writing, Men, Forever

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