"The notion that we should promote "happy" or "humane" exploitation as "baby steps" ignores that welfare reforms do not result in providing significantly greater protection for animal interests; in fact, most of the time, animal welfare reforms do nothing more than make animal exploitation more economically productive by focusing on practices, such as gestation crates, the electrical stunning of chickens, or veal crates, that are economically inefficient in any event. Welfare reforms make animal exploitation more profitable by eliminating practices that are economically vulnerable. For the most part, those changes would happen anyway and in the absence of animal welfare campaigns precisely because they do rectify inefficiencies in the production process. And welfare reforms make the public more comfortable about animal exploitation. The "happy" meat/animal products movement is clear proof of that.

Sometimes what we think is a disappointment is God working behind the scenes protecting us from that situation. Trust and believe, He will always come through for you with another opportunity, and catapult you with something more significant and fulfilling.

Behind every man or woman of significance, there is a woman or man of wisdom.

"Things don't have significance: they only have existence.

"The notion that evil is non-rational is a more significant claim for Eagleton than at first appears, because he is (in this book [

It takes faith to find personal significance in your relationship with God rather than how much money you earn, how beautiful you look, how many toys you own, how many trophies you collect, or how much territory you conquer and control.

Different states of consciousness project different images of God?loving or vengeful or jealous, energetic or terrifying, and different images of God affect the nature and quality of our response to God. . . . The image or idea of God as wrathful and jealous will have a different effect than the image or the idea of God as loving. Similarly, whether God is regarded as male or female will have a significant impact on the culture. (29)

It is of great significance if there is a person who truly prays in a family. Prayer attracts God's Grace and all the members of the family feel it, even those whose hearts have grown cold. Pray always.

?"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

"It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either signifies nothing or has only a negative significance.

Don't be more serious than God. God invented dog farts. God designed your body's plumbing system. God designed an ostrich. If He didn't do it, He permitted a drunken angel to do it. Empirical facts can add significantly to the meaning of "being Godlike".

The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

"El universo est? simplemente all?; esa es la ?nica forma en que un Fedaykin puede imaginarlo y permanecer due?o de sus sentidos. El universo ni amenaza ni promete. Contiene cosas m?s all? de nuestro dominio: la ca?da de un meteoro, la erupci?n de una masa de especia, cosas que crecen y mueren. Esas son las realidades de este universo y deben afrontarse independientemente de lo que uno sienta por ellas. Uno no puede apartarlas de su lado. Se precipitar?n contra uno a su silenciosa manera y entonces, solo entonces, uno comprender? lo que significan ?vida y muerte?. Y al comprenderlo, uno se sentir? colmado de alegr?a.

Al?m disso, somos individualmente o produto de for?as que n?o escolhemos e que mal compreendemos. N?o escolhemos nossos pais nem a ?poca em que nascemos, e assim recebemos uma determinada heran?a gen?tica sobre a qual n?o temos controle algum, mas que, at? um ponto significante, tem controle sobre n?s. Essa heran?a determina, em parte, as doen?as a que somos suscet?veis e os limites de nossas capacidades intelectuais, atl?ticas e morais. Talvez n?o totalmente, mas o suficiente. Nascemos num ambiente que vai preencher o pouco espa?o que sobra do que foi determinado geneticamente, um ambiente que, novamente, n?o escolhemos e sobre o qual mal temos controle, pelo menos durante nossos anos de forma??o. A maneira como somos e aquilo que fazemos s?o resultados de nossos genes e nosso ambiente, que, juntos, exercem em n?s uma influ?ncia que compreendemos de forma bastante nebulosa. Era isso que os fil?sofos existencialistas, com Jean-Paul Sartre, por exemplo, queriam dizer quando afirmavam que somos jogados no mundo.

You are what you do. If you do boring, stupid monotonous work, chances are you'll end up boring, stupid and monotonous. Work is a much better explanation for the creeping cretinization all around us than even such significant moronizing mechanisms as television and education.

Whereas I think: I'm lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don't occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I'm fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven't existed and won't exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!

If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

"We each have within ourselves the ability to shape our own destinies. That much we understand. But, more important, each of us has an equal ability to shape the destiny of the universe. Ah, that you find more difficult to believe. But I tell you it is so. You do not have to be the leader of the Council. You do not have to be king or monarch or the head of a clan to have a significant impact on the world around you.

If we wish to draw philosophical conclusions about our own existence, our significance, and the significance of the universe itself, our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge. A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality, and not vice versa, whether or not we like the implications.

What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.

"Sometimes the most remarkable things seem commonplace. I mean when you think about it jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane it defies the gravity of a entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that seems tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research blood sweat tears and lives have gone into the history of air travel and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies.

I've always thought people would find a lot more pleasure in their routines if they burst into song at significant moments.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

The span of three or four minutes is pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. People lose hundreds of minutes everyday, squandering them on trivial things. But sometimes in those fragments of time, something can happen you'll remember the rest of your life.