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.
To me, ideology is corrupt; it's a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you're an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you're religious, there's a mystery left there.
You cannot slander human nature; it is worse than words can paint it.
In principle as a philosophy, a model of organising society, Communism has to be respected. As regards the use of certain methods to advance social justice and greater regulation by the state, there are certain methods that are useful. What we need is a new society, a new civilization and convergence of all that is best in both [Communism and Capitalism]
With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.
...she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was like and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside of herself.
We are always the same age inside.
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