Joshua Lederberg Quotes

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't, regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

I don't know; I think I'd be gloomy without some faith that there is a purpose and there is a kind of witness to my life.

In order to live man must believe in that for which he lives.

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life.

I believe there is meaning in life. I believe there is good and evil.

I wouldn't say I'm a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.

And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them, and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I saw that people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly, as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me, as much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life; but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil and an absurdity. And really my life—a life of indulgence of desires—was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, “Life is evil and an absurdity,” referred only to my life, but not to human life in general.

I know that I'm here - I believe that I'm here for a purpose. I believe in forces of fate.

First, believe in the world - that there is meaning behind everything.

She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.

But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

I guess I have a faith. I have an overriding feeling that all of this can't be for nothing. But then I also fully understand that it might be.

I'm strong and spiritual, and I know that everything will work out for a reason.

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

I have a lot of success and make a good living, but after while, you start going 'Why? Why are you doing all this?'

We hope there is a sense of purpose in everything.

I think that everybody needs four things in life. Everybody needs something to do regardless of age. Everybody needs someone to love. Everybody needs something to hope for, and, of course, everybody needs someone to believe in.

There are two great days in a person's life - the day we are born and the day we discover why.

Sometimes, I wonder what I'm doing here.

Faith has a role to play in life. It is not related to success. It is the other way round. Success is related to faith. Faith comes first.

I was reared a Catholic but I think every day we ask ourselves, not consciously, what are we doing on this planet? What's it all about?

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life.

Life is essentially a question of values.

Inner-life questions are the kind everyone asks, with or without benefit of God-talk: 'Does my life have meaning and purpose?' 'Do I have gifts that the world wants and needs?' 'Whom and what shall I serve?' 'Whom and what can I trust?' 'How can I rise above my fears?'