Francis Schaeffer Quotes

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

If nothing matters, there's nothing to save.

I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives, we fall very easily into despair.

Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

The fact we exist merely means we exist. That's all it means.

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

If there's no meaning in it," said the King, "that saves a world of trouble, you know, as we needn't try to find any. And yet I don't know," he went on [...]; "I seem to see some meaning in them, after all.

The meaning of life consists in the fact that it makes no sense to say that life has no meaning.

It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.

Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.

Our conviction that the world is meaningless is due in part to the fact (discussed in a later paragraph) that the philosophy of meaningless lends itself very effectively to furthering the ends of political and erotic passion; in part to a genuine intellectual error - the error of identifying the world of science, a world from which all meaning has deliberately been excluded, with ultimate reality.

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?

"Tell me, Tool, what dominates your thoughts?" The Imass shrugged before replying. "I think of futility, Adjunct." "Do all Imass think about futility?" "No. Few think at all." "Why is that?" The Imass leaned his head to one side and regarded her. "Because, Adjunct, it is futile."

Futility has become a great subject, full of opportunities.

An intention that rejects what has no meaning in fact is a rejection of the entirety of being.

They pursue meaninglessness until they can force it to mean.

The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.

Life is nothing in itself. It’s a place marker that proves who’s winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing but the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it’s an insult to lose. The ends don’t justify the means. The means don’t justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justice.” ~ Durzo Blint

Meaning doesn't lie in things. Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that aren't love - the money, the car, the house, the prestige - we are loving things that can't love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless. Money, of itself, means nothing. Material things, of themselves, mean nothing. It's not that they're bad. It's that they're nothing. ("A Return to Love")