Jonathan Haidt Quotes

The meaning of life is life.

I was looking for what the meaning of life was.

At the heart of life lies a mystery that everybody has to wrestle with. What the heck are we doing here? How does this world work, and how do I fit?

If I want to read something that's really giving me something serious and fundamental to think about, about the human condition, if you like, or what we're all doing here, or what's going on, then I'd rather read something by a scientist in the life sciences, like Richard Dawkins, for instance.

I think Phil Dick was particularly interesting in that, first of all, he was a very modern man and a very modern thinker, but I don't know what demons drove him.

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

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Albert Camus's 'La Peste' - 'The Plague' - had an enormous impact on me when I read it in high school French class, and I chose my senior yearbook quote from it. In college, I wrote a philosophy class paper on Camus and Sartre, and again chose my yearbook quote from 'La Peste.'

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.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Man - a being in search of meaning.

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.

'Lost' makes a lot of sense to me, philosophically.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

… one must never forget that in the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators.

I want to study philosophy. That fascinates me.

I didn't study English literature - I studied philosophy at university - so Kierkegaard, Nietzsche - these people are among the most important writers to me. So my interest is in the big questions more than it is in storytelling.

‎Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

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

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.

Maybe there isn't a meaning to life. Maybe there's only a meaning to living.

I like to think that death gives life meaning. I like that philosophy.

I got a bit obsessed with the whole English language and was writing journals and poetry. I've always been intrigued about psychology and philosophy and how people's minds work.

Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation