Maybe it was my natural optimism at work, but what I saw and warmed to in the existentialist writings was that life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; that it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it’s as though you aren’t there.

Alan Alda (b. 1936) American actor [b. Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo]

Commencement Speech, Connecticut College (1980)

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