Existence Quotes - Page 39

• From a boy
  I gloated on existence. Earth to me
  Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there
  One trembling opportunity for joy.

  Alan Seeger

  Life, Boys, Opportunity

  Alan Seeger (2001). “Poems”

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• The hour which gives us life begins to take it away.

  Seneca the Younger

  Life, Giving, Hours

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• Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Life, Ocean, Boundless

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• If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature.

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Running, Love Is

  "The Art of Loving". Book by Erich Fromm, 1956.

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• The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Love Is, Important

  "The Art of Loving". Book by Erich Fromm, 1956.

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• Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, - the bare existence of such a power, - is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions.

  Nicholas Trist

  Banking, Spirit, Institutions

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• Nature is man's teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.

  Alfred Nobel

  Teacher, Nature, Travel

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• By its existence, the Peace Movement denies that governments know best; it stands for a different order of priorities: the human race comes first.

  Martha Gellhorn

  Peace, Government, Order

  Martha Gellhorn (1988). “The Face of War”, p.336, Atlantic Monthly Press

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• Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.

  Bernard Crick

  Men, Political, Politics

  "In Defence of Politics".

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• ...for limited purposes only, let me define religion as a set of symbolic forms and acts which relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence.

  Robert Neelly Bellah

  Men, Religion, Purpose

  Robert Neelly Bellah, Steven M. Tipton (2006). “The Robert Bellah Reader”, p.24, Duke University Press

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• Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Use, Principles

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• Are you never afraid of God's judgement in denying him? Most certainly not. I also deny Zeus and Jupiter and Odin and Brahma, but this causes me no qualms. I observe that a very large portion of the human race does not believe in God and suffers no visible punishment in consequence. And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Thinking, Odin

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• Scientific evidence for God's existence is being claimed today by theists, many of whom carry respectable scientific or philosophical credentials. He who is neither a she nor an it supposedly answers prayers and otherwise dramatically affects the outcome of events. If these consequences are as significant as believers say, then the effects should be detectable in properly controlled experiments.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Prayer, Philosophical, Religion

  Victor J. Stenger (2003). “Has Science Found God?: The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe”, Pyr Books

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• To most theistic believers, human life can have no meaning in a universe without God. Quite sincerely, and with understandable yearning for a meaning to their existence, they reject the possibility of no God. In their minds, only a purposeful universe based on God is possible and science can do nothing else but support thistruth.

  Victor J. Stenger

  Support, Mind, Religion

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• Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.

  Gore Vidal

  Men, Religion, Sometimes

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• The ancient Greeks did not have to wrestle with the philosophical problem of the existence of evil. They did not claim their gods were good, just magnificent.

  Margaret Visser

  Philosophical, Evil, Greek

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• Science is the century-old endeavour to bring together by means of systematic thought the perceptible phenomena of this world into as thorough-going an association as possible. To put it boldly, it is the attempt at a posterior reconstruction of existence by the process of conceptualization. Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judgements of all kinds remain necessary.

  Karl Popper

  Mean, Science, Judgement

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• No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.

  Frances Moore Lappé

  People, Promise, Democracy

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• Architecture is the frame of human existence. We must dedicate this existence more to beauty. For if poetic principle has deserted us, how long are we going to last?

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Beauty, Long, Lasts

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• I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.

  Giacomo Casanova

  Being Alone, Giving, Feelings

  Giacomo Casanova (2013). “The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt: Complete”, p.28, Simon and Schuster

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• In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part.

  Washington Irving

  Life, Happiness, Men

  Washington Irving (1866). “The Works of Washington Irving ...: Oliver Goldsmith; The sketch book”

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• Each band or level, being a particular manifestation of the spectrum, is what it is only by virtue of the other bands. The color blue is no less beautiful because it exists along side the other colors of a rainbow, and "blueness" itself depends upon the existence of the other colors, for if there were no color but blue, we would never be able to see it.

  Ken Wilber

  Beautiful, Blue, Color

  "The Spectrum of Consciousness". Book by Ken Wilber, 1993.

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• I tend to follow a very nocturnal sort of existence mainly because I don't much care for sunlight. Bright colors of any kind depress me, in fact. And my moods are more or less inversely related to the clarity of the sky, on any given day.... my private motto has always been that behind every silver lining there is a cloud.

  Glenn Gould

  Depression, Depressing, Color

  "The Life and Times of Glenn Gould". Documentary, March 13, 1998.

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• The older I get the more I'm convinced that it's the purpose of politicians and journalists to say the world is very simple, whereas it's the purpose of historians to say, 'No! It's very complicated.'
  The job of the historian is to help give people a sense of existence in time, without which we are really not fully human.

  David Cannadine

  Jobs, Simple, History

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• Life is an incurable disease.

  Abraham Cowley

  Life, Success, Disease

  "To Dr. Scarborough" l. 111 (1656)

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