Neil Gaiman Quotes

A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human"?

Everyone asks me about being so worried or thinking about existence as if I'm the only person who can't understand why a tree grows the way it does or why a person is in power when they're not that great. These are questions everyone has.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.

What Shakespeare and the Greeks were able to do was radically question what it meant to be a human being.

I think Poe had a mission to tell us what it's all about. To answer some of the great questions of life.

If you cannot render me a reason how I came hither, and what I am, I must go to those who will render me one. And if that craving be not satisfied by a rational theory of life, it will demand satisfaction from some magical theory;

We humans have always looked to the sky as a sounding board for asking big questions about ourselves: Who are we? Where did we come from? Where are we going?

I know that in many things I am not like others, but I do not know what I really am like. Man cannot compare himself with any other creature; he is not a monkey, not a cow, not a tree. I am a man. But what is it to be that? Like every other being, I am a splinter of the infinite deity, but I cannot contrast myself with any animal, any plant or any stone. Only a mythical being has a range greater than man's. How then can man form any definite opinions about himself?.

If people looked at the stars each night, they'd live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.

We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person?How did we come to be, and wha will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?

When or if answers are found, you can be assured those answers will lead to more questions. Is the troubling or wonderful? It depends on your view of your place in nature, your place among the stars; I suppose.

What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.

I know the stars are my home. I learned about them, needed them for survival in terms of navigation. I know where I am when I look up at the sky. I know where I am when I look up at the Moon; it's not just some abstract romantic idea, it's something very real to me. See, I've expanded my home.

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will die and learn everything--or stop asking.

For this moment, nothing matters. Look up into the stars and you're gone.

Is a man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water crawling impotently on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is he perhaps both as once?

Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow.

Which is it? Is man only a blunder of God? Or is God only a blunder of man?

No one sees what is before his feet: they scan the tracks of heaven.

In the realm of human destiny, the depth of man's questionings is more important than his answers.

And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement.