Michael Leunig Quotes

We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.

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.

How we come to be, and how we are what we are, is beyond any understanding. I have been obsessed by this, trying to understand the very nature of my existence.

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.

It's only ... when we're stripped of purpose that we know who we are.

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 frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am.

My fascination is not for cinema; it's for human nature and human beings because I find it quite difficult being one at times.

I'm not interested in nostalgia; I'm interested in who I am.

My problem was I let myself become known before I knew myself.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

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

I'm on this search trying to figure out exactly who I am and what I have to say to people.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'

A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.

My interest lies in my self-expression - what's inside of me - not what I'm in.

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.

One of my problems is to find the self.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that's always existed.

I don't know what else I would be if I wasn't me. I am not looking from the outside, looking back. I am who I am.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Acting is usually regarded as a wholly narcissistic pursuit but there really is a hunger in me to unravel the human condition.