Alan Cohen Quotes

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

There's not a drug on earth can make life meaningful

Nobody wants to have meaninglessness in their lives. You probably see a lot of people living their lives that don't have a whole lot of meaning that you can perceive, and you don't want that for yourself.

People believe a man is in distress because his loved one dies in one day. But his real pain is less futile: it is that he finds out that sadness too does not last. Even pain has no meaning.

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

In this shrinking world, it is futile to seek safety behind geographical barriers. Real security will be found only in law and in justice.

If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared. (pg. 59, "Racism and the Economy")

Does life have any meaningful purpose?

The struggle for existence is a struggle 'for' something; it is purposeful and only in so being is it meaningful and able to bring meaning into life.

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live.

I would like to see Russia not invade Ukraine or put pressure on and threaten Baltic states. But we live in the real and existing world.

I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.

An easy life is rarely meaningful and a meaningful life rarely easy.

But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.

Is there any real purpose in being alive if all we are going to do is get up every day and live only for ourselves? Live your life to help others. Give & live selflessly.

The two real problems in life are boredom and death.

My life had come to a sudden stop. I was able to breathe, to eat, to drink, to sleep. I could not, indeed help doing so; but there was no real life in me.

I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living.

I seek the real stuff of life. Profound drama.

You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

When in our isolation we see our lives seeping away as a mere succession of moments, tossed meaninglessly about by accidents and overwhelming events; when we contemplate a history that seems to be at an end, leaving only chaos behind it, then we are impelled to raise ourselves above history.

Without God, all of our efforts turn to ashes and our sunrise into the darkest of nights.

Those who devote their lives to earning a living are incapable of living a human existence.

Everybody knows how awful the world is and what a terrible situation it is and each person distorts it in a certain way that enables him to get through. Some people distort it with religious things. Some people distort it with sports, with money, with love, with art, and they all have their own nonsense about what makes it meaningful, and all but nothing makes it meaningful. These things definitely serve a certain function, but in the end they all fail to give life meaning and everyone goes to his grave in a meaningless way.