Dan Barker Quotes

What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.

If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.

If you do not believe in a personal God, the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe.

You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.

The essence of squatter or popular sovereignty—I don't care how you call it—is that if one man chooses to make a slave of another, no third man shall be allowed to object.

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.

The secret of life is in love the love of God and the service of humanity.

In every man's mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man.

The purpose of life is life.

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave.

If God existed, only in one way could he serve the cause of human liberty-by ceasing to exist.

To believe in God is to see that life has a meaning.

Does life have any meaningful purpose?

Without God there is for mankind no purpose, no goal, no hope, only a wavering future, an eternal dread of every darkness.

I do not believe making money in order to consume goods is mankind's sole purpose on this planet.

Just because you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things to have reasons for why they are.

Live is meaningful only if you gave it a meaning.

We need not seek a cause or a motive or a purpose for that which is, in its nature, eternally self-existent and free.

Life does not have meaning through mere existence or acquisition or fun. The meaning of life is inherent in the connections we make to others through honor and obligation.

I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.

To toil for a hard master is bitter, but to have no master to toil for is more bitter still.

When we live our lives not for vanity, but for the sake of God and the betterment of humanity, that's what gives us immortality.

Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall your eye show to me: free for what?