Alan Cohen Quotes

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive... To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

First and foremost, you do not have to live up to or emulate the lives of any of your predecessors. But at the very least, you should know about them. You will have your own life, interests, and ideas of what you want or do not want in life. Do what you enjoy doing. Be honest with yourself and others. Don't think of satisfying anyone: your elders, peers, government, religion, or children who will come after you. Develop meaningful ideals, and become conscious of others, their existence, and their lives.

This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.

I had fame and wealth and things that are supposed to make you happy, but I wasn't happy, because there's no importance on having a fulfilling life. So in my mid-40s, that was my pursuit - making films that interested me, films that I would like to go see.

Live is meaningful only if you gave it a meaning.

You cannot be all things to all people. Be unique. Be different. Give to others what you want yourself. And do what you were made to do.

I choose to fill my days with what I'm passionate about, and live with purpose.

It's the only way that YOUR life is gonna have any value to you. If you're just living the same life that everybody else is living what's the point?

What each must seek in his life never was on land or sea. It is something out of his own unique potentiality for experience, something that never has been and never could have been experienced by anyone else.

Everything I've done has been personally fun, important, and meaningful to me.

Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.

If you have not taken the time to define what happiness means to you, what have your spent your whole life pursuing?

The basic answer is that I wasn't happy or fulfilled by the job I had and I wanted my life to mean something to me, so I searched my life experience and realized that acting and performing were activities that I enjoyed all aspects of.

I was concerned about filling my life up with something important to me. To me, it was just necessary.

I know what I want, I want things for myself, but I think the key to life is somebody to love, something to do and something to look forward to. I don't think it's complicated.

A good thing to live by is to go after what truly interests you.

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power or goodness.

You only have one life and if you're not doing what you love, what's the point?

When you don't have children you have to define and make your own purpose, and make your own reason for being here.

If you do the things you enjoy and are good at, I really have a feeling that that will lead to having a fulfilling life, and people with fulfilling lives are able to be 'good people.'

I don't have any ambition to make lots of money or win an Oscar or anything like that. It's not about that for me.

I do things that I actually love and understand.

Your job is not just to do what your parents say, what your teachers say, what society says, but to figure out what your heart calling is and to be led by that.

Do something because you really want to do it. If you're doing it just for the goal and don't enjoy the path, then I think you're cheating yourself.