My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.
Interpretation
We can find meaning in our lives without striving for greatness or transcendence.
In this quote by Richard Rorty, he expresses the idea that individuals can derive significance and value from their lives even in the absence of lofty ambitions or aspirations for greatness. Rather than pursuing a transcendent purpose, Rorty suggests that the meaningful aspects of life can be found in our everyday experiences and connections with others.
In practice
In a motivational speech about finding purpose in everyday life, I would use this quote to emphasize the importance of gratitude and presence.
To say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that languages are human creations.~ The suggestion that truth~ is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language his own.
The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.
Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.
National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change.
There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.
Even when you err, it is a thousand times better to err out of conviction than to hide your true opinion to respect some authority.
When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.
No Hindu community, however low, will touch cow's flesh. On the other hand, there is no community which is really an Untouchable community which has not something to do with the dead cow. Some eat her flesh, some remove the skin, some manufacture articles out of her skin and bones.
God doesnβt need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be.
If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?
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