Meaninglessness Quotes

“I had someone once who made every day mean something.
And now…. I am lost….
And nothing means anything anymore.”
― Ranata Suzuki

“Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.”
― Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up in a dictionary. You are meaning.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Just tell me why; why the fucking why?" To which the universe would hollowly respond, "My ways cannot be known, oh man." Which is to say, "My ways do not make sense, nor do the ways of those who dwell in me.”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

“There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“If you write a line of zeroes, it´s still nothing.”
― Ayn Rand, We the Living

“I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is 'Disappear Here' and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Less Than Zero

“In the neuter austerity of that terrain all phenomena were bequeathed a strange equality and no one thing nor spider nor stone nor blade of grass could put forth claim to precedence. The very clarity of these articles belied their familiarity, for the eye predicates the whole on some feature or part and here was nothing more luminous than another and nothing more enshadowed and in the optical democracy of such landscapes all preference is made whimsical and a man and a rock become endowed with unguessed kinship.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“The reason dying is so easy is because death has no meaning... And the reason death has no meaning is because life has no meaning. All the same, have fun!”
― Janne Teller, Nothing

“When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Perhaps man was neither good nor bad, was only a machine in an insensate universe--his courage no more than a reflex to danger, like the automatic jump at the pin-prick. Perhaps there were no virtues, unless jumping at pin-pricks was a virtue, and humanity only a mechanical donkey led on by the iron carrot of love, through the pointless treadmill of reproduction.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.”
― Judith Guest, Ordinary People

“There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“Düşün! Bize, matematik dünyasının kurgusal ve sonsuz olduğu öğretildi. Bunu kabul ederim, 1'den sonra 2 gelir dendi. Bunu da kabul ederim. Ama sonra, 1 ile 2 arasındaki sonsuzluğu düşündüm. Peki o nereye gitti? İrrasyonel sayılar varken bir sayıdan sonra diğer bir tam sayı nasıl gelebilir? Eğer 1'den sonra virgül konursa ve bunun da kıçına sonsuz sayı konabiliyorsa 2 nasıl gelir? İşte! Soru bu! Yanıtsız bir soru. Ve işte matematiğin hatası! Dolayısıyla matematik yok. Onun üzerine kurulmuş dünya düzeni de yok... Ama ben anlayabilirim. Anlayabilirim bu sorunu. Ve o zaman ortaya yaklaşık sayılar çıkar. Yani hiçbir sayı tam değildir. Hepsi tama yaklaşır. Ama varamaz. Demektir ki, 1,999...9'u bize 2 diye yutturmaya çalışan bir dünyanın çocuklarıyız. Ve dünya da aslında tam gibi görünürken, aslmda bir irrasyonellik harikası. İşte bunun için hayat yoktur. Olsa dahi o da irrasyoneldir! Yani anlamsızdır. Ne bir başlama nedeni, ne de bir oluş nedeni vardır. Evrende uçuşan kocaman bir irrasyonellik. Tabiî ki dünyanın bir anlamı olması gerekmiyor. Belki de onu anlamlandıran üzerinde yaşayan akıl sahibi yaratıklardır. Ama onların da bizi getirdiği nokta ortada!”
― Hakan Günday, Kinyas ve Kayra

“A world without right or wrong was a world that did not want itself, anything other than itself, or anything not those two things, but that still wanted something. A world without right or wrong invited you over, complained about you, and gave you cookies. Don't leave, it said, and gave you a vegan cookie. It avoided eye contact, but touched your knee sometimes. It was the world without right or wrong. It didn't have any meaning. It just wanted a little meaning.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“Many things that don't really mean so much of anything, are wonderful.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Thrown from my secure life, whether by chance or the Powers That Be, I was sitting on a skipping stone and it was fear, not confidence, that was increasing with the ripples of uncertainty. Mine had become a world without center.”
― James Campion Conway, The Vagabond King: A coming of age story

“Yes, be different, but not for the vanities of being different.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“In video games you sometimes run into what they call a side quest, and if you don't manage to figure it out you can usually just go back into the normal world of the game and continue on toward your objective. I felt like I couldn't find my way back to the world now: like I was somebody locked in a meaningless side quest, in a stuck screen.”
― John Darnielle, Wolf in White Van

“What infinite heart's-ease
Must kings neglect, that private men enjoy!
And what have kings, that privates have not too,
Save ceremony, save general ceremony?
And what art thou, thou idle ceremony?
What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more
Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?
What are thy rents? what are thy comings in?
O ceremony, show me but thy worth!
What is thy soul of adoration?
Art thou aught else but place, degree and form,
Creating awe and fear in other men?
Wherein thou art less happy being fear'd
Than they in fearing.
What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet,
But poison'd flattery? O, be sick, great greatness,
And bid thy ceremony give thee cure!
Think'st thou the fiery fever will go out
With titles blown from adulation?
Will it give place to flexure and low bending?
Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee,
Command the health of it? No, thou proud dream,
That play'st so subtly with a king's repose;
I am a king that find thee, and I know
'Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,
The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,
The intertissued robe of gold and pearl,
The farced title running 'fore the king,
The throne he sits on, nor the tide of pomp
That beats upon the high shore of this world,
No, not all these, thrice-gorgeous ceremony,
Not all these, laid in bed majestical,
Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave,
Who with a body fill'd and vacant mind
Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread;
Never sees horrid night, the child of hell,
But, like a lackey, from the rise to set
Sweats in the eye of Phoebus and all night
Sleeps in Elysium; next day after dawn,
Doth rise and help Hyperion to his horse,
And follows so the ever-running year,
With profitable labour, to his grave:
And, but for ceremony, such a wretch,
Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep,
Had the fore-hand and vantage of a king.
The slave, a member of the country's peace,
Enjoys it; but in gross brain little wots
What watch the king keeps to maintain the peace,
Whose hours the peasant best advantages.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Where are we headed? Are we not endlessly plunging —backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there an up and a down anymore? Do we not wander as if through an endless nothingness? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Hasn’t it grown colder?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

“It was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.”
― Anne Rice, Pandora: New Tales of the Vampires

“The Second Koran tells us that the darkness in ourselves is a sinister thing. It waits until we relax, it waits until we reach the most vulnerable moments, and then it snares us. I want to be dutiful. I want to do what I should. But when I go back to the tube, I think of where I am going; to that small house and my empty room. What will I do tonight? Make more paper flowers, more wreaths? I am sick of them. Sick of the Nekropolis.

I can take the tube to my mistress' house, or I can go by the street where Mardin's house is. I'm tired. I'm ready to go to my little room and relax. Oh, Holy One, I dread the empty evening. Maybe I should go by the street just to fill up time. I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?”
― Maureen F. McHugh

“He lived a quiet existence where the future was easy to predict and the past was a cancer in remission. It was meaningful, of course. But it was lonely.”
― Adelheid Manefeldt, Consequence

“Such dreams provide this temporary illusion of a life that has meaning.”
― Anna Jae

“Probably, as in all metaphysical questions, both are true: Life is or has meaning and meaninglessness. I cherish the anxious
hope that meaning will preponderate and win the battle.”
― C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“In a world where nothing matters, the most atrocious events are no longer horrifying; the most piteous victims no longer stir our compassion; the most frightening possibilities, like nuclear war and ecological destruction, no longer frighten us. Sometimes we explain it away as "compassion fatigue", but really it is a disconnection from reality. None of it seems real. We sit back, benumbed, watching the world slide slowly toward a precipice as if it were an on-screen enactment. Similarly, we watch the years of our own lives march on, indifferent to the preciousness of each passing moment. Only once in a while an alarm goes off, we panic for a moment with a thought like, "This is real! This is my life! What am I here for?" And then our environment tempts us back into stupor.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity: Civilization and the Human Sense of Self by Eisenstein, Charles

“Student: Master, I haven't been able to create any meaning in my life, what should I do now? Master: Continue living meaninglessly, it's better than not living at all!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“And yes, given our circumstances, in this post-enlightenment era of post-trust, post-truth, post-rationality, post-honour, and post-chivalry; as meaningless non-entities in a disenchanted and mechanistic cosmos, these actions are perfectly understandable. As Henry Corbin tells us, we are engaged in a terrible “battle for the soul of the world”, and it's a battle that we may even lose.”
― H.M. Forester