Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

David Schmidtz

American Kendrick Professor of Philosophy and Economics at the University of Arizona

"If you honestly wish to find meaning, don’t look where the impact isn’t. Look where the impact is. Life’s meaning, when it has one, is going to be as big as life, but it cannot be much bigger than that."

"Meanings track relationships… Our lives become intrinsically valuable to us by becoming instrumentally valuable to others. Meaning can be our gift to each other."

"People who know they are terminally ill often seem to live more meaningfully. Though dying, they somehow are more alive. They cherish each morning and are vividly aware of each day’s passing. They see despair as a self-indulgent waste, and they have no time to waste."

"Life’s meaning is contingent on how we live. As life takes one direction rather than another, so does its meaning."

"Meanings are symbolic. Meaning is what the phenomenon symbolizes to a viewer."

"The existentialist insight, in part, is that meaning is something we give to life. We do not find meaning so much as throw ourselves at it. The Zen insight, in part, is that worrying about meaning may itself make life less meaningful than it might have been. Part of the virtue of the Zen attitude lies in learning to not need to be busy: learning there is joy and meaning and peace in simply being mindful, not needing to change or be changed. Let the moment mean what it will."

"The Zen attitude is that meaning isn’t something to be sought. Meaning comes to us, or not. If it comes, we accept it. If not, we accept that too."

"The special glory of being human is precisely that we have choices. The special sadness lies in knowing there is a limit to how right our choices can be, and a limit to how much the rightness of our choices can matter."