Paul Kurtz Quotes

Human life has no meaning independent of itself. There is no cosmic force or deity to give it meaning or significance. There is no ultimate destiny for man. Such a belief is an illusion of humankind's infancy. The meaning of life is what we choose to give it. Meaning grows out of human purposes alone. Nature provides us with an infinite range of opportunities, but it is only our vision and our action that select and realize those that we desire.

Everybody eventually discovers that they are an individual with the power to affect their own lives and make it better or not.

And when man faces destiny, destiny ends and man comes into his own.

No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself.

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.

Man must assume responsibility for the direction of his life and destiny.

A man really determines himself by what he does.

I believe whatever has to happen will happen - you just need to stand up for yourself.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.

My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?

To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate.

We all create the person we become by our choices as we go through life. In a real sense, by the time we are adults, we are the sum total of the choices we have made.

One creates oneself.

We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

The simplest way to say it is that I think we're all dealt these cards in life, but the cards in and of themselves don't read one way or the other. It's up to you to home in and cultivate whatever you've got in your hand.

Men are not yet ready to shape their own destinies, to control and direct world events, of which -- instead -- they become the victims.

Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power.

Humanism is the creed of those who believe that in the circle of enwrapping mystery, men's fates are in their own hands—a faith that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith.

We make our own history. The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the ideas, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voices of the people themselves.

If I had to sum it up, the goal of Scientology is giving the person back to themselves. Like, your own power of choice.

That was a sin: to consider yourself victimized or not able to control your destiny or your fate - that was the one cardinal sin in our community.