Mark Twain Quotes

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.

It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.

The meaning of life is that nobody knows the meaning of life.

If life is so meaningless, then why are we always bringing it up?

Man's progress is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.

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.

If I have no children what would be the point of living.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

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

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

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?

Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism.

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

Science and literature are both ways to ask questions about why we're here.

'What is the purpose of the universe?' is a silly question.

In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.

What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.

The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.

I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

it seems a silly kind o' business to bring us into the world at all for no special reason 'cept to take us out of it again just as folks 'ave learned to know us a bit and find us useful.

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