Purpose of Life Quotes

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

Life is a great gift, and as we reach years of discretion, most of us naturally ask ourselves what should be the main object of our existence.

The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.

The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays; the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.

For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

I think life's too complex to be an accident.

But a society that has nothing to die for has nothing to live for . . .

To lose one's life is no great matter; when the time comes I'll have the courage to lose mine. But what's intolerable is to see one's life being drained of meaning, to be told there's no reason for existing. A man can't live without some reason for living.

Everything happens for a reason, but that doesn't mean there's a point.

Paradoxically, life is worth living for those who have something for which they will gladly give up life.

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.

One of my optimistic prophecies is based on the assumption that machines could have the best algorithms in the universe, but it will never have purpose. And the problem for us to explain purpose to a machine is because we don't know what our purpose is. We have the purpose, but we still ... When we look at this global picture, a universal picture, to understand what is our purpose being here on this planet? We don't know.

The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in theirs.

Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

When you understand that life is a test, you realize that nothing is insignificant in your life.

Live is meaningful only if you gave it a meaning.

What if we fail to stop the erosion of cities by automobiles? ... In that case America will hardly need to ponder a mystery that has troubled men for millennia. What is the purpose of life? For us, the answer will be clear, established and for all practical purposes indisputable. The purpose of life is to produce and consume automobiles.