J. Michael Straczynski Quotes

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

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.

From my undergraduate days, I've always been interested in the major philosophical questions that don't seem to have an answer that everyone agrees on.

Philosophy is an attempt by man to find cause and effect. Religion has the same goal.

So few humans seem to fully exist themselves that I wonder if all this endless speculation and haggling about God is really an exploration of a more interesting and embarrassing question about ourselves.

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?

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

I was obsessed with religious questions, the basics: Why are we here? Why is the world so beautiful?

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

The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.

How we come to be, and how we are what we are, is beyond any understanding. I have been obsessed by this, trying to understand the very nature of my existence.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

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

My motivation is to get a deeper understanding and exploration of something that I want to know about the human condition. So, that's what I look for in the material I read: if it's asking a genuine question about a concept of the world that interests me. And also, it helps if it's a context that I find interesting.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

I like films that deal with some of those questions that you can never answer: 'Why are we here? What's it about? What happens to us with the choices that we make? What are the ramifications for doing something right, or doing something wrong?' Those universal questions, I enjoy.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.

Science is very good at answering the 'how' questions. 'How did the universe evolve to the form that we see?' But it is woefully inadequate in addressing the 'why' questions. 'Why is there a universe at all?' These are the meaning questions, which many people think religion is particularly good at dealing with.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

In the early ages, I believe not much thought was given to what man is and what his real functions should be, and what is the real purpose of his life.

Human life is beyond comprehension.

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;

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I hadn't really thought of them as being philosophical questions, but one rapidly comes to an understanding that philosophy's only really about two questions: 'What is true?' and 'What is good?'