Quotes on Life

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners...

A living system, due to its circular organization, is an inductive system and functions always in a predictive manner: what happened once will occur again. Its organization, (genetic and otherwise) is conservative and repeats only that which works. For this same reason living systems are historical systems; the relevance of a given conduct or mode of behavior is always determined in the past.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

The problem that we, as living organisms, face - and not we only, humans, but any living organism faces - is the management of life.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. 

Living systems are units of interactions; they exist in an ambience. From a purely biological point of view they cannot be understood independently of that part of the ambience with which they interact: the niche; nor can the niche be defined independently of the living system that specifies it.

The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all."

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush.

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

The secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for.

Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.

Biology is Engineering.

Do not take life too seriously. You will not get out of it alive.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly, that is what each of us is here for.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. 

It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.

Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take but by the moments that take your breath away.

BIRTH: The first and dirtiest of all disasters.

At the end of all our wanderings, we will arrive at the place we started, and know it for the first time

Every theory is gray, and only is green the tree of golden fruits that is life.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

We want to make life permanent, but in doing so we go against nature, and there lies our pain. Only the mind which is always moving, without resting places and fixed ideas, can be in tune with life and therefore joyful.

In my end is my beginning.

Life is a trap you can escape only by throwing yourself into it.

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

For life is a vice: the greatest one of all.

Life is a state of mind. (From the film "Being There")

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.