Tim Minchin Quotes

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

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.

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

The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.

Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.

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

Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die, without really finding out the big answers. We develop all those long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality of our lives in different ways, without really extending our body of worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up our lives with shite, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless.

Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.

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 realization that life is absurdand cannot be an end, but only abeginning. This is a truth nearly allgreat minds have taken as their starting point.

I'm glad the universe is pointless. It means if I get to the end of my life, the universe can't turn to me and go, 'What have you been doing, you idiot? That's not the point!

"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."

Yet in truth the big question Camus asked was never the Anglo-American liberal one: How can we make the world a little bit better tomorrow? It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight? That the answers come to much the same thing in the end-easy does it; tomorrow may be a bit better than today; and, after all, you have to have a little faith in people-doesn't diminish the glamour that clings to the man who turned the question over and look at it, elegantly, upside down.

L'homme est une passion inutile. Man is a useless passion.

The point is there ain't no point.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing; but instead of nonchalantly promenading our own corruption, we exude our sweat and grow winded upon the fetid air.

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

People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.

I shall go on shining as a brilliantly meaningless figure in a meaningless world.

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.