Herbie Hancock Quotes

I don't think humanity is the highest form of life that will ever exist in the universe. Maybe that's a bit cynical. But most of the people I know are loving, kind, doing their best.

A wonderful realization will be the day you realize that you are unique in all the world. There is nothing that is an accident. You are a special combination for a purpose -- and don't let them tell you otherwise, even if they tell you that purpose is an illusion. (Live an illusion if you have to). You are that combination so that you can do what is essential for you to do. Don't ever believe that you have nothing to contribute. The world is an incredibly unfulfilled tapestry. And only you can fulfill that tiny space that is yours.

Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here.

You are not an accident. You are one of a kind. Your big dream is from God, and its irreplaceable. And you were born to seize it and celebrate it every day of your life!

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings?' Existing courses cannot help you answer those questions. They can't even help you ask them.

What do I have to say to the universe? A soul ought to have something to say to the universe if it's going to be immortal.

It's the only way that YOUR life is gonna have any value to you. If you're just living the same life that everybody else is living what's the point?

I can't believe that God put us on this earth to be ordinary.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

There is something in this world that every individual can do. God has created all of us with something unique to contribute.

Your sole contribution to the sum of things is yourself.

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

What I see in science is a lot of imagination referring to things that are fundamental to what we are. Our cells, our history, our future, our place in the universe, our lack of place in the universe. That's poetry as far as I'm concerned.

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.

When I go out and talk to people about how unique they are as a human being and that there's a niche for them that they need to follow through on for their lives, it's what I truly believe in.

Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe.

It's crucial that people think that their lives have meaning and a purpose and that there's a reward or some sort of reality to achieving something and to learning something and becoming functional.

Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?

Each of us is a unique strand in the intricate web of life and here to make a contribution.

Enthusiasm for the universe, in knowing as well as in creating, also answers the question of doubt and meaninglessness. Doubt is the necessary tool of knowledge. And meaninglessness is no threat so long as enthusiasm for the universe and for man as its center is alive.

Every one on this earth should believe, amid whatever madness or moral failure, that his life and temperament have some object on the earth. Every one on the earth should believe that he has something to give to the world which cannot otherwise be given.

Everyone is given one gift, a reason for being, and it's our obligation to do something with it.

You will find true success and happiness if you have only one goal, there really is only one, and that is this: to fulfill the highest most truthful expression of yourself as a human being. You want to max out your humanity by using your energy to lift yourself up, your family and the people around you. Theologian Howard Thurman said it best. He said, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”