Top Highlights

• We have a primal desire to impose order on disorder—to find the signal in the noise. We see faces in the clouds, hear footsteps in the rustling of leaves, and detect conspiracies in unrelated events. We are constantly taking pieces of information and adding a layer of meaning to them; we couldn’t function otherwise.
• cultivating the best qualities within you both morally and intellectually and living up to your potential. It is an active life, a life in which you do your job and contribute to society, a life in which you are involved in your community, a life, above all, in which you realize your potential, rather than squander your talents.
• The rise of philosophy, religion, natural science, literature, and even art can be at least partly explained as a response to two questions: “What is the meaning of existence?” And, “How can I lead a meaningful life?”
• is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied,” wrote the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill.
• On the Meaning of Life, which was published in 1932.