That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Believing life is worth living is a prerequisite for making any meaningful conclusion about value.
- In plain terms
- You must assume life has value to find value in anything else.
- What can you take from it?
- Assume life matters before proving it.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What helps you maintain belief in life's value?
- Can you find meaning without assuming it first?
Another view
It offers little practical help to those suffering deeply.
More from George Santayana
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
Permalink to quote #12 Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
Permalink to quote #14 Even the most inspired verse, which boasts not without a relative justification to be immortal, becomes in the course of ages a scarcely legible hieroglyphic; …
Permalink to quote #11
Related quotes
Myth is the nothing that is all.
Fernando PessoaFernando Pessoa quote #2 Many things are possible. Few things are certain.
Harry TurtledoveHarry Turtledove quote #2 It is only when we realize that life is taking us nowhere that it begins to have meaning.
P. D. OuspenskyP. D. Ouspensky quote #3