Marc Chagall Quotes

I was drawn to astronomy by a teenage existential quest. Around 13, I was deep into wondering about the meaning of life and what I was doing here. I turned to religion, but that did nothing for me. I got to wondering where was here. So, I began studying astronomy and became enthralled by what I learned.

I love being around people who work with their hands, who do the hard things to keep our country going. They're just my kind of people.

When we look up at the sky, we are trying to find the way to ourselves.

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

God puts certain things in certain people. I'm a restless soul. I'm always searching. I'm always pressing to find what truth is and what life is all about.

My whole life I've been a seeker, searching for something.

I've always built furniture and done farm work.

I fell in love with this idea of an old school game character, like Donkey Kong, who looks like a very simple guy but is really wrestling with this very profound struggle: 'What's the meaning of life? What if I don't like this job I've been programmed to do?'

I didn't really have a religious upbringing in my life, which was tough at times because I was searching for some kind of meaning, but it also gave me an avenue to find my own sense of connection.

Everyone goes through that time in their life when they're trying to figure out who they are, find their own purpose and their own way.

We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from those that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late sixties and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.

When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.

To his and everybody else's way of thinking, you should build a house with your own hands before you start talking about being an engineer.

The Jesus who is the one whom we search for even when we do not know that we are searching and hide from even when we do not know that we are hiding.

Trying to separate myself from my instincts of pessimism and cut out and define what it is that I really do love, what I'm here to be, why I'm here, and what I think is worth being alive for and fighting for. And those things change, but I think that that's something I am always chasing.

Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.

A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.

I see myself as a man who is searching for meaning in life. This is rather different from being a staunch believer in something. A believer is someone who senses a consciousness or a direction and believes in it. The one who searches for meaning has not found the direction yet.

I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.

I have always regarded manual labour as creative and looked with respect-and, yes, wonder-at people who work with their hands. It seems to me that their creativity is no less than that of a violinist or painter.

I have to convince myself that this is not a pointless life, even the body is telling me so.

I think that we all at some point are in search of something - a higher power, whatever you want to call it, the meaning of life. I know I was, especially at even my son's age in my 20s, and dabbling in Eastern philosophies and yoga and Buddhism and Christianity and Islam. I kind of touched them all, you know, just trying to figure out the meaning of life or if nothing else, figure myself out.

If you want to find out the purpose of life, you need to look beyond the limitations of body and mind.

What do I want? The answer to that question does not exist.