Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It Quotes

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“In his Studies in Pessimism, he wrote: “If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Perhaps.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards. —DIOGENES”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.” —WILLIAM JAMES, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live

“Utilitarianism is a type of hedonism.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Utilitarianism: A moral and political philosophy that proposes the doctrine of the greatest good/happiness for the greatest number of people. According to one of Utilitarianism’s chief architects, Jeremy Bentham, the basic idea is to find a balance between the individual’s happiness and the happiness of the community, “each counting in an equal way.” In positing happiness as its aim, Utilitarianism is a type of hedonism.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Rationalism: In epistemology, the theory that truth begins and ends in the mind, not in the senses. It is the ultimate intellectualism, claiming that everything can be figured out deductively. For this to be so, reality has to have an intrinsically logical design; then all we have to do is really think about something and its nature will reveal itself right inside our beans.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Nihilism: Negativity as an approach to philosophy and life. Various types of Nihilism range from negating the existence of everything to negating the possibility of knowing anything to just negating social and political mores and morality in general. Not a reassuring philosophy. Always reminds me of King Lear’s line, “Nothing will come of nothing.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Monism: The metaphysical position that ultimately the cosmos and everything in it is One Thing with a single unified set of natural laws that guide it. Saying that the entire universe is composed of only atoms that are managed by the universal laws of physics is a monistic statement. Materialism is a form of Monism.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Metaphysics: One of the main topics of philosophy and a bit of a catchall for everything that isn’t logic, epistemology, or ethics. Metaphysics looks at the Big Picture: What is “being”? What is the cosmos and what is it made of? Also, incidentally, what is the meaning of life?”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Materialism: The philosophical position that there is only one thing in the universe: stuff, matter. Anything other than matter is either reducible to matter, as thoughts are reducible to the matter of a brain doing its thing, or doesn’t exist, like the Tooth Fairy.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Logical Positivism: An early-twentieth-century school of philosophy that limits the scope of philosophy to the scientific method (empirical verification) and logic. Everything else philosophy once considered, such as metaphysics and ethics and theology, is tossed out the window as unverifiable and therefore meaningless.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Empiricism: The school of philosophy that maintains that knowledge of the external world (as compared to knowledge of analytic logic and its proper applications) comes only from sensory experience. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Empiricism came in reaction to rationalism. Empiricism is a stance in epistemology. It is sometimes summed up by the statement, “What you see is all you get.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Absurdism: The concept that we cannot reconcile our desire to find a meaning of life with the fact that it is rationally impossible to do so. Also, various philosophers’ ideas on how to lead an absurdist life. Some people who embrace the absurdist outlook find it hilarious in a bittersweet sort of way.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Humanism: The stance that the good of humankind is of prime importance. In modern times, humanism means that pursuing this good has nothing to do with a god; doing good works for other humans is a value in itself, not the fulfillment of a duty to a god.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Hedonism: The theory that pleasure is the sole value in life, so go for it. Likewise, pain makes life less pleasant, so do whatever is necessary to avoid it. In short, if it feels good, it is good. There are many philosophical variations of Hedonism, all of them a pleasure to think about.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Epistemology: The study of knowledge. It basically asks, What is a rational test for knowability? How can we know for certain what is real? How can we know which propositions are true and which are not? What are basic principles of certainty? Epistemology attempts to lay down the line between knowledge and mere belief. It is one of the main topics of philosophy, along with logic, ethics, and metaphysics.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Niebuhr was also concerned with man’s place in the immanent world, the world of cultures and societies and political creeds. After the rise of Nazism, he began to focus on the “herd mentality” that Nietzsche had so abhorred. Niebuhr brooded over man’s weakness in the face of conformist human behavior. Also like Nietzsche, he believed that as long as we remain a product of our culture, we cannot rise above its values.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.” —MARCUS AURELIUS, ROMAN EMPEROR AND PHILOSOPHER
(AD 121–180), STOIC”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne. He once quipped, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Do whatever it takes to stop feeling bad, including downing a couple of shots of bourbon.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining?” —ADAM PHILLIPS, BRITISH PSYCHOANALYST AND PHILOSOPHER
(1954–), FREUDIAN EXISTENTIALIST”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Ludwig Wittgenstein, generally considered the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century,”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“I hope there is no God” passage, Nagel wrote that “[I] am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.” I, too, know a great number of very bright and knowledgeable people who are believers. It sometimes makes me wonder if the skeptics have it backward: maybe I am just not wise enough to be a believer.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“I live with the fact that I don’t know if there really is any meaningful cosmic order and, God knows, that is a continual frustration. But I don’t understand why it should be any more frustrating to know that there is a grand design but I am unable to understand it. In both cases, I am in the cosmic dark.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“Nagel’s argument begins with what he calls our “fear of religion,” a fear with which he claims to be personally familiar. By this, he does not mean the fear that the New Atheists talk about—a fear based on the observation that religion can corrupt society, make us despise those who do not share our religious beliefs, and ultimately make us kill one another. That may be so, but Nagel is referring to something else, something fundamental to the human condition. He says that what we basically fear is that religion may be true.”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It

“It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.” —THOMAS NAGEL, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER (1937–), ETHICIST AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER”
― Daniel Klein, Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It