Neil Postman Quotes

Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'What shall we do and how shall we live?'

I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

You'll never know why you exist, but you'll always allow yourselves to be easily persuaded to take life seriously.

For in truth it is life that gives unto life-while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but a witness.

He has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving [than we do to ask Him]. As much as we want God to explain himself to us, His creation, we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

A new question has arisen in modern man's mind, the question, namely, whether life is worth living...No sensible answer can be given to the question...because the question does not make any sense.

There's more to Life than this

Science only answers the question, How does it work? Or at most, What's there? Science asks what and how, philosophy asks why, myth and religion ask who. Who's in charge here? Who's the author? That's what we really long to know.

Does life have any meaningful purpose?

Some people seek meaning in life through personal gain, through personal relationship, or through personal experiences. However, it seems to me that being blessed with the intellect to divine the ultimate secrets of nature gives meaning enough to life.

If I just got up in the morning and had no place to go and was retired or something, I would be sitting there and be thinking, "Gee, what is the purpose of life? Why are we all finite? Why do we get old and die? Is there nothing out there? Why is it so tragic? Why do our loved ones perish? Why do we generate?" Who wants to think about that stuff?

Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don't know the meaning of life

Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? And If I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I want to see him.

People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.

Art is really people asking the eternal question, "What is it all about?"

I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.

Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!

...If there’s a God, there are plenty of people who know where he is.” I shrugged, still watching the sky. ... “I just want to know that he’s there, so that I can die knowing there’s going to be someone I can punch in the mouth on the other end.

I am afraid of death. I believe nothing, and therefore like many who believe nothing I must make something, and that something is the meaning which I give my life.

If the thought ever comes to you that everything that you have thought about God is mistaken and that there is no God, do not be dismayed. It happens to many people. But do not think that the source of your unbelief is that there is no God.

How do I know that loving life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death I am not like a man who, having left home in his youth, has forgotten the way back?

The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.

It is worth while dying, to find out what life is.

If a man hasn't found anything worth dying for, he hasn't anything worth living for.