I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
Since the late 1970's, the main focus of prisons has been punishment, not rehabilitation. It's hard to believe, but you would be hard-pressed to find a meaningful violence-prevention class in a federal or state penitentiary. And 'we the people' are footing the bill to keep these folks imprisoned. It costs on average $46,000 a year to keep an adult incarcerated in California and about the same for New York State.
I didn't try and say anything terribly meaningful. I'm definitely not a social commentator at all.
You never know that the things you're doing are that meaningful to society.
At your worst point, the quickest way to move through it is to be a contribution as opposed to focusing on your problems. If you focus on your problems and keep giving them attention, they're going to grow. If you ignore them and do something else - I don't mean act like they're not here - but do something meaningful, it helps you work through it.
I had to get really clear about what was meaningful & what wasn't, who I was & who I wasn't & who I wasn't going to be anymore.
When in Italy, you should meet Italians.
When I returned as CEO in 2008, Starbucks had forgotten that meaningful innovations balance an organization's heritage with modern-day relevance and market differentiation, so we had to reorient. In one brainstorming session, we visited and observed great retailers, then asked ourselves, 'If Starbucks did not exist, what type of coffee experience would we create?
Several people have told me that one of the most meaningful events they could attend would be something at the White House with their children.
That doesn't mean that the top fifteen institutions in the ranking somehow don't belong there at all. But what is the difference between number two and number eight in any meaningful sense? As an administrator who worked to build a complex university, I find the assumption slightly offensive. We need to be committed to excellence, not to lists.
There's something about being under-rested and knowing that the situation is going to remain that way for quite some time that makes things more meaningful.
The pessimism of the intellect is the starting point for struggle. It's not the end point, it's the starting point. You have to make something critical to make it meaningful, to make it transformative.
I think that property is very important in this day and age. It defines you; you worked hard to get it. It's meaningful to you, and when you divorce, a lot of people have a lot of battles over their property for good reasons.
I look for the meaning in what's funny, and I look for what's funny about things that are meaningful to me.
The more you know, the more unflinchingly you deny casual beliefs and Accepted Wisdom when it flies in the face of reality, the more carefully you observe the world and its people around you, the better chance you have of writing something meaningful and well-crafted.
I'm not sure a person ever really reveals the whole of himsels or herself to another person, and I'm not sure we should. Or rather, just because you don't, it doesn't mean you can't have a meaningful relationship with another person. It's important to remember that this idea of confessing your most shameful, embarrassing stories and self to someone else as an expression of love and intimacy is a relatively recent phenomenon, and a new definition of what it means to be close to someone. After all, the self is by its nature secretive.
If you start asking how do we make life meaningful and life never ends, then you get into sort of these terrible sort of metaphysical quandaries and it gets really, really bleak looking.
I've never really understood the desire to be immortal myself. The idea of both wanting to live forever in some form and wanting to stay young forever just sounds exhausting. It's one of those desires that people think they want but when you actually stop to think about what it actually means, it's really awful. One of the reasons that life is bearable is because it's going to end soon. One of the main concerns of fiction is how do we make a life of 85 years or so meaningful.
It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the ferrets of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won.
I just had a baby. I'm not going to work unless it's something really special and meaningful, because I can't imagine missing all that time with my daughter.
Instead of always asking yourself how to clear up your mental fog, learn to ask: "Can confusion know anything about clarity?"
I think reality TV now needs a big kick up the a - to get creative and be meaningful, I think. Otherwise, people are becoming famous for having no talent, based on pure exposure. That's the grating part.
The Obama administration already claims the power to wage endless and boundless war, in virtually total secrecy, and without a single meaningful check or constraint. No institution with any power disputes this. To the contrary, the only ones which exert real influence - Congress, the courts, the establishment media, the plutocratic class - clearly favor its continuation and only think about how further to enable it.
Forget what you are supposed to do, do what you want to do.
Content is the meaningful substance of the work.
