Rollo May Quotes

HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something? CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.

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.

Nihilism: any aim is lacking, any answer to the question "why" is lacking. What does nihilism mean?--that the supreme values devaluate themselves.

The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?

Poor, dear God. Playing Idiot's Delight. The game that never means anything, and never ends.

The point is there ain't no point.

Nothing matters. Nothing matters.

Life is nothing in itself. It’s a place marker that proves who’s winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing but the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it’s an insult to lose. The ends don’t justify the means. The means don’t justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justice.” ~ Durzo Blint

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

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

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism.

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

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.

When we attempt to find meaning in the pursuit of pleasure, the commitment to a job, or through plumbing intellectual depths, we all eventually find in each of these pursuits a dead end.

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.

In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.

Futility has become a great subject, full of opportunities.

Everything is absurd.

Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

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