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.
We make choices. No one else can live our lives for us. And we must confront and accept the consequences of our actions.
It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.
When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
He gazes through sunlight's buttresses, back down the refectory at the others, wallowing in their plenitude of bananas, thick palatals of their hunger lost somewhere in the stretch of morning between them and himself. A hundred miles of it, so suddenly. Solitude, even among the meshes of this war, can when it wishes so take him by the blind gut and touch, as now, possessively. Pirate's again some other side of a window, watching strangers eat breakfast.
Thousands of years ago, weren't we capable of building enormous structures like the pyramids? Weren't we capable of worshiping gods, weaving, making fire, finding lovers and wives, sending written messages? Of course we were. But although we've succeeded in replacing slaves with wage slaves, all the advances we've made have been in the field of science. Human beings are still asking the same questions as their ancestors. In short, they haven't evolved at all.
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