The Meaning of Life is that it stops. Franz Kafka
Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal. Jean-Paul Sartre
The sole Meaning of Life is to serve humanity. Leo Tolstoy
Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it. George Carlin
By the way, there’s nothing wrong with the planet in the first place – the planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compare with the people, the planet is doing great; it’s been there over four billion years … Believe me, the planet has put up with much worse than us … The planet isn’t going anywhere, folks. We are. We’re going away. Pack your shit, we’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little styrofoam. The planet will be here and we’ll be gone. Another failed mutation. Another closed-end biological mistake. The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas, and it will heal itself, because that’s what the planet does – it’s a self-correcting system. The air and water and earth will recover and be renewed, and if plastic is not degradable, well, most likely, the Earth will include it in a new paradigm. Earth plus plastic. The Earth doesn’t share our prejudice against plastic. Plastic came out of the Earth; She probably sees it as one of her many children. In fact, it could be the reason the Earth allowed us to be spawned in the first place – it wanted plastic and didn’t know how to make it. It needed us. That could be the answer to our age-old question: why are we here? Plastic, assholes! George Carlin, Napalm and Silly Putty
I need a place to put my stuff ... That’s the Meaning of Life, isn’t it? Trying to find a place for your stuff. George Carlin, Stuff
To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding. Peter Ackroyd
So what are we? A statistical accident. Where are we? Nowhere special. Where are we going? Into oblivion. A meaningless hiccup in the blank procession of matter through time. It’s a tatty destiny. Horizon: The Anthropic Principle, BBC 1987
A super civilisation wouldn’t just make one perfect simulation of the past ... If the computer of the future is churning out billions of simulations, how do we know we’re living in the original real world and not one of the billions of copies? In fact the odds against us being real are billions to one against. Horizon: Time Trip, BBC 2003
Now we’re told we may not even be real. Instead we may merely be part of a computer system. Our free will, as Newton suggested, is probably an illusion. And just to rub it in, we are being controlled by a super-intelligent superior being. ibid.
One thing is that I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs, in different degrees of certainty, about different things. But I’m not absolutely sure of anything and of many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me. Richard Feynman, interview BBC Horizon 1981
We absolutely must leave room for doubt or there is no progress and there is no learning. There is no learning without having to pose a question. And a question requires doubt. People search for certainty. But there is no certainty. People are terrified – how can you live and not know? It is not odd at all. You only think you know, as a matter of fact. And most of your actions are based on incomplete knowledge and you really don’t know what it is all about, or what the purpose of the world is, or know a great deal of other things. It is possible to live and not know. Richard P Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P Feynman
Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfil whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfil the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfil whatever dreams are within our capability.
Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide. Michio Kaku
We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures; because the earth never froze entirely during an ice age; because a small and tenuous species, arising in Africa a quarter of a million years ago, has managed, so far, to survive by hook and by crook. We may yearn for a ‘higher answer’ – but none exists. Stephen J Gould
The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life’s meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal. Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
A Triptych: What a painting this is. What a devastating meditation on the human condition. Suddenly this feeling develops: humans are nothing more than the flesh and fluids from which they are made. That despite all our pretensions all life is desire and death, and that try as we might to make our lives meaningful, all we are is lonely and fragile creatures fighting in vain against the night. In his masterpiece Bacon had finally expressed the hopelessness of life. Dr James Fox, British Masters III: A New Jerusalem, BBC 2013
There’s got to be some purpose in life, some meaning. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958 starring Paul Newman & Elizabeth Taylor & Burl Ives & Judith Anderson & Jack Carson & Madeleine Sherwood & Larry Gates & Vaughn Taylor et al, director Richard Brooks, Brick to Big Daddy
So the Meaning of Life is Shit Happens, huh? Sukiyaki Western Django 2007 starring Quentin Tarentino & Hideaki Ito & Koichi Sato & Yusuke Iseya & Masanobu Ando & Takaaki Ishibashi & Shun Oguri Masato Sakai & Yutaka Matsushige & Quentin Tarantino et al, director Takashi Miike, hero
If there’s no-one out there, what is the point in existence? Why are we here? Red Dwarf s1e4: Waiting for God, Rimmer to Lister, BBC 1998
I know the meaning of the universe. Red Dwarf s4e4: White Hole, Holly to Toaster
Data, you’re asking probably the most difficult of all questions. Some see it as a changing into an indestructible form, forever unchanging. They believe that the purpose of the entire universe is to then maintain that form in an Earth-like garden which will give delight and pleasure through all eternity. On the other hand there are those who hold to the idea of our blinking into nothingness with all of our experiences and hopes and dreams merely a delusion ... Considering the marvellous complexity of the universe, its clockwork perfection, its balances of this against that ... matter, energy, gravitation, time, dimension, I believe that our existence must be more than either of these philosophies. That what we are goes beyond Euclidean or other ‘practical’ measuring systems ... and that our existence is part of a reality beyond what we understand now as reality. Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e2: Where Silence Has Lease, Picard to alien as Data
If there is a cosmic plan, are we not a part of it? Star Trek: The Next Generation s2e15: Pen Pals, Troi
Our reality may be very much like theirs. And all this might be just an elaborate simulation. Star Trek: The Next Generation s6e12: Ship In A Bottle, Picard
I have begun to wonder: what if it wasn’t a dream? What if this life we’re leading, all of this, you and me, everything, what if all of this is the illusion? Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s6e13: Far Beyond The Stars, Sisko to Dad
We are biological creatures. We are born, we live, we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason, and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear, we find courage in the face of helplessness, insignificance and uncertainty. Jonathan Sacks
What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning. Charlie Chaplin
Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question. Tennessee Williams
Of course to be candid, father, a prolonged future doesn’t excite me. It would have to have a point. I’ve sometimes doubted whether Life itself has any. Lost Horizon 1937 ***** starring Ronald Colman & Jane Wyatt & H B Warner & Sam Jaffe & John Howard & Edward Everett Horton & Thomas Mitchell & Margo & Isabel Jewell & David Clyde & David Torrence et al, director Frank Capra, Conway to High Lama