Walter Kaufmann Quotes

You are free to give life meaning, whatever meaning you want to give it.

Naturalism says that we were not put here for any purpose. But that doesn't mean there isn't such thing as purpose. It just means that purpose isn't imposed from outside. We human beings have the creative ability to give our lives purposes and meanings.

Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.

Some instinct - and I think it was a correct one - led me to do something difficult enough to give my life meaning.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

When you don't have children you have to define and make your own purpose, and make your own reason for being here.

Humanism is the creed of those who believe that in the circle of enwrapping mystery, men's fates are in their own hands—a faith that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

Inspiration has become this word that people tend to talk about as something from the outside. The truth is that... it is inside, like a burning fire: it is the feeling of certainty that your life has a meaning and you'll do something important.

How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own vitals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives.

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

I am learning that if I just go on accepting the framework for life that others have given me, if I fail to make my own choices, the reason for my life will be missing. I will be unable to recognize that which I have the power to change.

The future is always changing. If we had no choices, there'd be no point in living.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

Life itself must be founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. And if we cannot prove that it is, we must believe that it is. We must believe that we can change, that we can control, that we can direct our own destinies.

I mean, I think we're put here on earth to make your own destiny, to begin with. I don't think there's anything you can do this way or that way to change anything.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

I do what I love to do, what I choose to do.

In the end, I want to be able to say, 'My life was what I made it.'

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.