As long as humankind recklessly proceeds in the fateful delusion of being biologically fated for triumph, nothing essential will change.

Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.

In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation.

Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life?

The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end.

Why does man need a meaning to life?

Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.