Significance Of Others Quotes & Sayings

Lord Jesus, thank You that my identity and worth is firmly rooted in You. My job doesn't define me, my relationships don't define me, and my various roles don't define me. I praise You for declaring me holy and dearly loved. You paid the highest price for my soul. How I thank You that I have value and significance in You. I am Your masterpiece, and You have gifted me uniquely for the roles You desire for me to play in Your kingdom. Thank You that I don't need to compare my gifts to the gifts of others in order to feel special. In Your kingdom, I am a royal priest/priestess. I praise You that I am a coheir with Christ and have inherited every blessing through Him. (Col. 3:12; 1 Cor. 6:12; Eph. 2:10; Isa. 43:4; Rom. 8:17) — Becky Harling

For the person trying to do everything alone, the game really is over. If you want to do something big, you must link up with others. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. That's the Law of Significance. — John C. Maxwell

To build a church when a school house is needed is to perpetrate a theft upon education.
To build a church when a hospital is needed is to take from the parched lips of the sick the cup of relief and from the suffering the merciful hand of help.
When the object of man's conduct will be to improve the conditions of his fellow man and not the appeasement of a mythical God, he will become more understanding and more indulgent of the frailties, mistakes, and action of others, and by the same token he will become more appreciative of their efforts.
He will develop a greater consciousness to avoid mistakes and to prevent injury. Life and its living will take on a greater significance, and our efforts and energies will be devoted to creating as much joy and happiness as possible for all living creatures. — Joseph Lewis

When a person consistently hurts others it is because they deeply hurt within theirself. They disconnect from that side of them that is accountable for their actions. They cast empathy to the darkest part of their soul and choose to live life not in God's light, but the superficial light of significance (compliments, achievements, status, personal gain, other people's approval and ego). This dimmed light will never be greater than the one God gives to those that consistently show compassion, mercy and empathy. These light deprived souls are the ones that will be the hardest to rescue from hell. — Shannon L. Alder

Everyone is searching for something. Some people pursue security, others pleasure or power. Yet others look for dreams, or they know not what. There are, however, those who know what they seek but cannot find it in the natural world. For these searchers many clues have been laid out by those who have gone before. The traces are everywhere, although only those with eyes to see or ears to hear perceive them. When the significance of these signs is seriously acted upon, Providence opens a door out of the natural into the supernatural to reveal a ladder from the transient to the Eternal. He who dares the ascent enters the Way of Kabbalah. — Z'ev Ben Shimon Halevi

When compared to eternal verities, most of the questions and concerns of daily living are really rather trivial. What should we have for dinner? What color should we paint the living room? Should we sign Johnny up for soccer? These questions and countless others like them lose their significance when times of crisis arise, when loved ones are hurt or injured, when sickness enters the house of good health, when life's candle dims and darkness threatens. Our thoughts become focused, and we are easily able to determine what is really important and what is merely trivial. — Thomas S. Monson

The nature of the epistolary genre was revealed to me: a form of writing devoted to another person. Novels, poems, and so on, were texts into which others were free to enter, or not. Letters, on the other hand, did not exist without the other person, and their very mission, their significance, was the epiphany of the recipient. — Amelie Nothomb

In public and in private life, it often happens that there is simply no time to collect the relevant facts or to weigh their significance. We are forced to act on insufficient evidence and by a light considerably less steady than that of logic. With the best will in the world, we cannot always be completely truthful or consistently rational. All that is in our power is to be as truthful and rational as circumstances permit us to be, and to respond as well as we can to the limited truth and imperfect reasonings offered for our consideration by others. — Aldous Huxley

To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance of others, by expressing in the world of forms- truth, love, purity and beauty - this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance. — Meher Baba

Empathy seems to have been replaced with judgement in today's world. NO ONE has arrived. I repeat, NO ONE has arrived. We all experience joy, happiness, sadness, anger, disappointment, fear, etc ... Some of the most successful people have said things in interviews that give you a peek into their vulnerable areas. The differences are found in how we manage our own issues so if you are beating yourself up, comparing yourself or on the other end of the spectrum looking down on others ... please stop! We are all searching for significance in one way or another ... some have found it within while it takes others a little more time searching the outside. Be true to yourself and allow others to do the same. Remember, no one has it all together all the time. NO ONE HAS ARRIVED ... WE ARE ALL BE-COMING. HUMANS BE-ING. So let folks BE. — Sanjo Jendayi

Intentional living is the bridge to significance. At the end of every year, I take time out to reflect and evaluate the events of the previous year - what went well and what needed improvement. From that inventory, I lay out my next year - how I intend to live, make the best use of time and maximize adding value to others. Success asks, 'How can I add value to myself?' Significance asks, 'How can I add value to others?' It is your intention that lends itself to significance. — John C. Maxwell

A private meaning is in fact no meaning at all. Meaning is only possible in communication: a word which meant something to one person only would really be meaningless. It is the same with our aims and actions; their only meaning is their meaning for others. Every human being strives for significance; but people always make mistakes if they do not see that their whole significance must consist in their contribution to the lives of others. An — Alfred Adler

Monogamy, it follows, is the sacred cow of the romantic ideal, for it is the marker of our specialness: I have been chosen and others renounced. When you turn your back on other loves, you confirm my uniqueness; when your hand or mind wanders, my importance is shattered. Conversely, if I no longer feel special, my own hands and mind tingle with curiosity. The disillusioned are prone to roam. Might someone else restore my significance — Esther Perel

Listening is a gift of spiritual significance that you can learn to give to others. When you listen, you give one a sense of importance, hope and love that he or she may not receive any other way. Through listening, we nurture and validate the feelings one has, especially when he or she experiences difficulties in life. — H. Norman Wright

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves. — Alain De Botton

When you become consumed by God's call on your life, everything will take on new meaning and significance. You will begin to see every facet of your life - including your pain - as a means through which God can work to bring others to Himself. — Charles Stanley

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. — Erich Fromm

If you have to be told how you should feel then those feelings are not strong enough to make you feel alive; they become rules that don't fit your life script. Not every person will place the same importance as you do on one of the six human needs: certainty, variety, significance, connection/love, growth or contributions. When you know what is most important for yourself and learn to recognize what need is the most important to others, then you can begin to unlock the real reason behind conflict. — Shannon L. Alder

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase. — Gregory Maguire

God's definition of success is really one of significance-the significant difference our lives can make in the lives of others. The significance doesn't show up in won-loss records, long resumes, or the trophies gathering dust on our mantels. It's found in the hearts and lives of those we've come across who are in some way better because of the way we lived. — Tony Dungy

How can we appraise a proposal if the terms hurled at our ears can mean anything or nothing, and change their significance with the inflection of the voice? Welfare state, national socialism, radical, liberal, conservative, reactionary and a regiment of others ... these terms in today's usage, are generally compounds of confusion and prejudice. If our attitudes are muddled, our language is often to blame. A good tonic for clearer thinking is a dose of precise, legal definition. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are always meaningful songs for somebody. People are doing their courting, people are finding their wives, people are making babies, people are washing their dishes, people are getting through the day, with songs that we may find insignificant. But their significance is affirmed by others. There's always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That's what dignifies the song. Songs don't dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song. — Leonard Cohen

As you strive for personal effectiveness and leadership excellence, there are local and global questions that you will inevitably have to face. These range from poverty, corruption, terrorism, food security, scarcity of resources and overpopulation among others. Your power and influence for significance in leadership excellence will increase in direct proportion to your ability to find effective and sustainable practical solutions to some of these real-life challenges. — Archibald Marwizi

And so, like many others, their honeymoon was a failure; yet they would not admit this to themselves, and they did not realize the significance of the failure until long afterward. — John Edward Williams

Failure to recognize one's own absolute significance is equivalent to a denial of human worth; this is a basic error and the origin of all unbelief. If one is so faint-hearted that he is powerless even to believe in himself, how can he believe in anything else? The basic falsehood and evil of egoism lie not in this absolute self-consciousness and self-evaluation of the subject, but in the fact that, ascribing to himself in all justice an absolute significance, he unjustly refuses to others this same significance. Recognizing himself as a centre of life (which as a matter of fact he is), he relegates others to the circumference of his own being and leaves them only an external and relative value. — Vladimir S. Soloviev

There is only one power which can from within undermine egoism at the root, and really does undermine it, namely love, and chiefly sexual love. The falsehood and evil of egoism consists in the exclusive acknowledgement of absolute significance for oneself and in the denial of it for others. Reason shows us that this is unfounded and unjust, but simply by the facts love directly abrogates such an unjust relation, compelling us not by abstract consciousness, but by an internal emotion and the will of life to recognize for ourselves the absolute significance of another. Recognizing in love the truth of another, not abstractly, but essentially, transferring in deed the centre of our life beyond the limits of our empirical personality, we by so doing reveal and realize our own real truth, our own absolute significance, which consists just in our capacity to transcend the borders of our factual phenomenal being, in our capacity to live not only in ourselves, but also in another. — Vladimir S. Soloviev

Consider the iatrogenics of newspapers. They need to fill their pages every day with a set of news items - particularly those news items also dealt with by other newspapers. But to do things right, they ought to learn to keep silent in the absence of news of significance. Newspapers should be of two-line length on some days, two hundred pages on others - in proportion with the intensity of the signal. But of course they want to make money and need to sell us junk food. And junk food is iatrogenic. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It has always seemed to me that one of the more deplorable aspects of dying, aside from the terror, pain and filth, is the fact that when I am gone there will be no one here to register the world in just the way that I do. Don't misunderstand me. I have no illusions about my significance in the torrid scheme of things. Others will register other versions of the world, countless billions of them, a welter of worlds particular each to each, but the one that I shall have made merely by my brief presence in it will be lost for ever. — John Banville

Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting the main religions of the world in being comparatively free from any limits of period, climate, or race. For while what we roughly call the Egyptian Religion, the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and others of similar fame have been necessarily local and temporary, Pantheism has been, for the most part, a dimly discerned background, an esoteric significance of many or all religions, rather than a "denomination" by itself. The best illustration of this characteristic of Pantheism is the catholicity of its great prophet Spinoza. For he felt so little antagonism to any Christian sect, that he never urged any member of a church to leave it, but rather encouraged his humbler friends, who sought his advice, to make full use of such spiritual privileges as they appreciated most. — J. ALLANSON PICTON

We give a lot of others significance in our lives even when they don't deserve it. It doesn't matter if they're family or if you've known them forever. If they're not good for you, they've got to go. — Gabrielle Union

Two things I try to remember:

My cultural, social, and financial environments formulate my view of the world. My age, sex, race, where I was born, who raised me, and who my inner circle is formulate my view of the world. My education, my exposure to new and different things, or lack thereof, formulate my view of the world. My view of the world formulates my opinions. But, if there's a missing piece from my world view, I can't have an informed, intelligent opinion on it. So, for example, if I've never experienced the color purple, my only informed opinions can be on the other colors. Not purple. I can say, "I don't like purple," or "I like purple," but in either case, my opinion has no significance.

The second thing I try to remember is that just because someone has a different opinion than I do, and he tells me so, it doesn't mean I'm being persecuted. In actual fact, it might mean that I'm about to learn something big. — Patricia V. Davis

Everything we do has significance. Every action, every thought leaves an imprint - not only on the self, but on the world, on the others, and even on time, on all who come after us!

This implies a responsibility for one's thoughts and actions that should be taken most seriously!

And yet one feels helpless, a hapless victim of circumstances beyond one's control, as if one's behavior and thoughts did not originate in the self, but were a product, an accumulation of imprints from the world, from our ancestors, from the people around us.

It behooves one to take responsibility, to take the power to decide how one will act, and even how one will think! Not only for the betterment of one's self, but for the betterment of the world, all the others, and all who will come after us! — Robert Crumb

How good is it to remember one's insignificance: that of a man among billions of men, of an animal amid billions of animals; and one's abode, the earth, a little grain of sand in comparison with Sirius and others, and one's life span in comparison with billions on billions of ages. There is only one significance, you are a worker. The assignment is inscribed in your reason and heart and expressed clearly and comprehensibly by the best among the beings similar to you. The reward for doing the assignment is immediately within you. But what the significance of the assignment is or of its completion, that you are not given to know, nor do you need to know it. It is good enough as it is. What else could you desire? — Leo Tolstoy

Success means using your knowledge and experience to satisfy yourself.
Significance means using your knowledge and experience to change the lives of others. — Bob Buford

The cross has become a symbol in much of the Western world, misused by many rock stars and others who do not comprehend its significance. — Billy Graham

Society tried to teach me that children are by nature selfish, out-of-control, and demanding, that their goal is power and that they are always trying to see how much they can get away with, that you can't let children manipulate you or become too dependant, and that disobedience equals disrespect. As a mother, I have come to believe strongly that my child's primary goals are having his needs met, feeling connected to others, and feeling self-worth. His misbehavior is an attempt to get a need met or to feel significance and connection, done in an appropriate way ... my job as a parent is to help my child identify and meet those needs in appropriate ways. - Lisa S. — Hilary Flower

A lot of people believe they are successful because they have everything they want. They have added value to themselves. But I believe significance comes when you add value to others and you can't have true success without significance. — John C. Maxwell

The person with a secular mentality feels himself to be the center of the universe. Yet he is likely to suffer from a sense of meaninglessness and insignificance because he knows he's but one human among five billion others - all feeling themselves to be the center of things - scratching out an existence on the surface of a medium-sized planet circling a small star among countless stars in a galaxy lost among countless galaxies. The person with the sacred mentality, on the other hand, does not feel herself to be the center of the universe. She considers the Center to be elsewhere and other. Yet she is unlikely to feel lost or insignificant precisely because she draws her significance and meaning from her relationship, her connection, with that center, that Other. — M. Scott Peck

There is a twilight zone in our hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves-our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and our drives-large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness. This is a very good thing. We will always remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Anxiety, as neuropsychologists today tell us, is toxic; our brains are wired to avoid anxiety. Anxiety corrupts the chemistry of the brain and leads us to depart (emotionally or physically) from others to protect ourselves. Jesus's words to his disciples "to fear not" (Luke 8:50 NRSV) become of utmost significance. Anxiety is so acidic that it is nearly impossible to have relationship, to be a place-sharer, where the air is poisoned with it. Bonhoeffer's calm and composure, even on the first day, signaled to the boys that he had no anxiety, no worry about lessons being unfinished or others thinking he was a failure. His composure signaled to them that it might be that he is really just here for them, rather than to fulfill some goal that they could frustrate (like getting them through the material). Bonhoeffer's composure tacitly indicated to the boys that he was more loyal to their concrete persons than any end others sought for them. — Andrew Root

Why was it given to Darwin, less ambitious, less imaginative, and less learned than many of his colleagues, to discover the theory sought after by others so assiduously? How did it come about that one so limited intellectually and insensitive culturally should have devised a theory so massive in structure and sweeping in significance? — Robert Wright

His aim was the creation of self sufficient small towns,really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life with others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planner in charge.
- discussing Ebenezer Howards' Garden City — Jane Jacobs

For the man on the street, science and math sound too and soulless. It is hard to appreciate their significance Most of us are just aware of Newton's apple trivia and Einstein's famous e mc2. Science, like philosophy, remains obscure and detached, playing role in our daily lives. There is a general perception that science is hard to grasp and has direct relevance to what we do. After all, how often do we discuss Dante or Descartes over dinner anyway? Some feel it to be too academic and leave it to the intellectuals or scientists to sort out while others feel that such topics are good only for academic debate. The great physicist, Rutherford, once quipped that, "i you can't explain a complex theory to a bartender, the theory not worth it" Well, it could be easier said than done (applications of tools — Sharad Nalawade

Successions are explained by historical narratives that indicate the significance of the events and the forces-human and otherwise-which influenced them. While some causal forces operate continuously, others influence the sequence of events only at particular points in time. For example, it makes no sense to say that Peter the Great caused the cold war; he had been dead for centuries before it started, and any direct causal influence would be impossible. However, Peter the Great took actions that set into motion historical events that promoted the unification and modernization of Russia. Without Peter, it is possible that Russia would have developed differently and that the cold war would not have occurred. Peter's actions exerted an influence in this case, but it is not the type of direct, continuous causal influence that most variable-based social science theories rely on. — Marshall Scott Poole

Desire is our imprisonment. The man who wants nothing, who is absolutely contented as he is, is free of all bondage. He has attained to ultimate freedom, nirvana - and that is the goal of life. And it is only by attaining that freedom that you will know the significance of being, the song of being, the celebration of being. Your life will become a continuous bliss, and not only that YOU will be blissful, you will be able to bless others too. The whole existence will be blessed by you, by your very presence. — Rajneesh

You will be educated, which means that you will be interested where others are bored, that you will notice unities where others experience randomness, and that you will intend meanings where others are just spouting words. For exactly that is supposed to be the result of becoming literate: The world becomes a thick texture of significance that you know how to access. — Eva Brann

The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. — Grayson L. Kirk

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead. — Nelson Mandela

The Kleinrock controversy is interesting because it shows that most of the Internet's creators preferred - to use the metaphor of the Internet itself - a system of fully distributed credit. They instinctively isolated and routed around any node that tried to claim more significance than the others. The Internet was born of an ethos of creative collaboration and distributed decision making, and its founders liked to protect that heritage. It became ingrained in their personalities - and in the DNA of the Internet itself. — Walter Isaacson

Jesus' mission wasn't to improve the old; his mission, and the mission he gave his disciples, was to embody the new - an entirely new way of doing life. It is life lived within the reign of God; life centered on God as the sole source of one's security, worth, and significance; life lived free from self-protective fear; and life manifested in Calvary-like service to others. His promise is that as his disciples manifest the unique beauty and power of this life, it will slowly and inconspicuously - like a mustard seed - grow and take over the garden. — Gregory A. Boyd

(...) Taking the journalist's vow of impartiality and objectivity was not unlike joining an order of monks and spending the rest of your life in a glass monastery - removed from the world of human affairs even as it continued to whirl around you on all sides. To be a journalist meant you could never be the person who tossed the brick through the window that started the revolution. You could only watch the man toss the brick, you could try to understand why he had tossed the brick, you could explain to others what significance the brick had in starting the revolution, but you yourself could never toss the brick or even stand in the mob that was urging the man to throw it. — Paul Auster

The Kennedy assassination has demonstrated that most of the major events of world significance are masterfully planned and orchestrated by an elite coterie of enormously powerful people who are not of one nation, one ethnic grouping, or one over-ridingly important business group. They are a power unto themselves for whom those others work. Neither is this power elite of recent origin. Its roots go deep into the past. — L. Fletcher Prouty

We hunger for significance, for signs that our personal existence is of special meaning to the universe. To that end, we're all too eager to deceive ourselves and others, to discern a sacred image in a grilled cheese sandwich or find a divine warning in a comet — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

According to the Shuos," Jedao said, "games are about behavior modification. The rules constrain some behaviors and reward others. Of course, people cheat, and there are consequences around that, too, so implicit rules and social context are just as important. Meaningless cards, tokens, and symbols become invested with value and significance in the world of the game. In a sense, all calendrical war is a game between competing sets of rules, fueled by the coherence of our beliefs. To win a calendrical war, you have to understand how game systems work. — Yoon Ha Lee

Love is the most important ingredient to any meaningful relationship. It is fundamental to true significance. Your quality of life is directly tied to the amount of love flowing in you and through you to others. Though it's often overlooked, love is infinitely more valuable than riches, fame, and honor. They will pass away, but love remains. You can be fulfilled without these, but not without love. — Alex Kendrick

Mead's anthropology had many other red, white and blue- blooded virtues. One was the common anthropological conceit, out of which she made a career, to the effect that the ultimate value of studying other cultures was the use we could make of them to reconstruct our own - a heady kind of intellectual imperialism, as if the final meaning of others' lives was their significance for us. — Margaret Mead

All people are, at heart, egocentric. We exist at the center of our own little universes. We believe that we are living out our lives as best we can, and that we have our own sphere of influence which exists of both friends and enemies. They in turn have their own friends and enemies with whom they interact. That is a given. But we, each of us, tend to put ourselves ahead of others because we believe that we are significant. We must attend to our own needs, desires, wants, and aspirations, because each of us is our own greatest priority. No one else cares for us as much as we do, no one else can exist in our skin. We think we're important. It is where our sense of self-worth comes up, where our egos reside, where "we" are. And we believe that each of our lives means something. — Peter David

If we no longer talk freely and openly about faith, we won't understand the language or the significance of faith, we'll misinterpret the religious words and deeds of others, and we'll underestimate the power faith can have in the lives of those deeply committed to their spiritual beliefs. This may present a serious risk to a generation whose most troubling conflicts promise to involve people who are primarily motivated by a very different faith. If we don't understand the faith roots of our American culture, how will we be able to defend it against theirs? — Ben Carson

My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see. — Albert Schweitzer