Non Existence Quotes - Page 2

• When talking about unicorns, minotaurs, or compassionate conservatives, one does not normally have to prove their non-existence; the mere lack of any evidence is sufficient reason not to believe in any of them.

  Peter Stone

  Believe, Talking, Religion

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• In Him there is no room for non-existence or imperfection

  Mulla Sadra

  Imperfection, Rooms, Existence

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• After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus."

  James Boswell

  Philosophy, Science, Feet

  James Boswell (1998). “Life of Johnson”, p.333, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Nothing is demonstrable, unless the contrary implies a contradiction. Nothing, that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being, whose existence is demonstrable.

  David Hume

  Death, Afterlife, Being There

  David Hume (2005). “Dialogues sur la religion naturelle”, p.244, Vrin

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• The Mutakallemim... apply the term non-existence only to absolute non-existence, and not to absence of properties. A property and the absence of that property are considered by them as two opposites, they treat, e.g. , blindness and sight, death and life, in the same way as heat and cold. Therefore they say, without any qualification, non-existence does not require any agent, an agent is required when something is produced.

  Maimonides

  Sight, Opposites, Two

  Moses Maimonides (2016). “Guide for the perplexed”, p.1023, Moses Maimonides

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• Hitherto without being; hidden away in the womb of eternity; possessed neither of thought nor feeling; remote from the range of human ken -- the Man bursts, in some unknown manner, the bars of non-existence, and announces with a cry the beginning of his brief life. In the night of non-existence there bursts forth also a little candle, lit by an unseen hand. Mark well its flame: for it is the life of that Man.

  Leonid Andreyev

  Night, Men, Flames

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• The so-called evils are evils only in relation to a certain thing, and that which is evil in relation to a certain existing thing, either includes the non-existence of that thing or the non-existence of some of its good conditions.

  Maimonides

  Evil, Certain, Existence

  Moses Maimonides (2012). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.266, Courier Corporation

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• That which is produced with intention has passed over from non-existence to existence.

  Maimonides

  Intention, Existence

  Moses Maimonides, Aeterna Press (1948). “The Guide for the Perplexed”, p.440, Aeterna Press

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• In very truth the days are almost free, and if it is another way of saying that our lives are empty, well -- there are days when emptiness is spacious, and non-existence elevating . . .

  Florida Scott-Maxwell

  Way, Emptiness, Empty

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• Not one of our mortal gauges is suitable for evaluating non-existence, for making judgments about that which is not a person.

  Anton Chekhov

  Afterlife, Soul, Gauges

  Note-Book of Anton Chekhov, 1921.

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• I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them.

  Richard Russo

  Suicide, Kids, Thinking

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• We no longer have a choice between violence and non-violence. The choice of today stands between nonviolence or non-existence.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Choices, Today, Violence

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• Each thing that exists remains forever, and that very existence of existence is proof of its eternity. But without that realization, which is the knowledge of perfect being, man would never know whether there was existence or non-existence. If eternal existence is altered, then it must become more beautiful; and if it disappears, it must return with more sublime image; and if it sleeps, it must dream of a better awakening, for it is ever greater upon its rebirth.

  Khalil Gibran

  Beautiful, Dream, Sleep

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• Ist es an und fu? r sich absurd, das Nichtsein fu? r einUbel zu ? halten; da jedes Ubel wie jedes Gut das Dasein zur Voraussetzung hat, ja sogar das Bewusstsein. It is in and by itself absurd to regard non-existence as an evil; for every evil, like every good, presupposes existence, indeed even consciousness.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Evil, Hats, Consciousness

  1844 DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

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• We do not admire, we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this world for love of the other. But what are we to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out of hatred of the other? He sacrifices the very existence of humanity to the non-existence of God. He offers his victims not to the altar, but merely to assert the idleness of the altar and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready to ruin even that primary ethic by which all things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance upon some one who never lived at all.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sacrifice, Hatred, Humanity

  "Orthodoxy". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Chapter VIII. "The Romances of Orthodoxy", 1908.

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• How can non-existence get sick of itself? Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing.

  Victor Pelevin

  Morning, Mean, Thinking

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• Be ye a refuge to the fearful; bring ye rest and peace to the disturbed; make ye a provision for the destitute; be a treasury of riches for the poor; be a healing medicine for those who suffer pain; be ye doctor and nurse to the ailing; promote ye friendship, and honour, and conciliation, and devotion to God, in this world of non-existence.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Pain, Healing, Medicine

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• One cannot long remain so absorbed in contemplation of emptiness without being increasingly attracted to it. In vain one bestows on it the name of infinity; this does not change its nature. When one feels such pleasure in non-existence, one's inclination can be completely satisfied only by completely ceasing to exist.

  Emile Durkheim

  Names, Long, Doe

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.243, Routledge

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• There is something very peculiar about this form of atheism: It tries to constantly remind us of God while maintaining He does not exist! How can you hate something that is not there? Why would you persistently prove to people the non-existence of a being really not there?

  Gerard Verschuuren

  Hate, People, Evil

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• God ceases to be God only for those who can admit the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself the most severe punishment they can suffer.

  Giacomo Casanova

  Punishment, Suffering, Fierce

  Giacomo Casanova (2013). “The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt: Complete”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• The modern choice is between non-violence or non-existence.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Choices, Violence, Modern

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• The Christian idea of a perfect heaven that is something other than a non-existence is a contradiction in terms.

  Aldous Huxley

  Christian, Ideas, Perfect

  Aldous Huxley (1969). “Great Short Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence, what I can only describe as a sense of peace, which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry.

  Georges Braque

  Believe, Discovery, Serenity

  Georges Braque (1964). “Georges Braque, 1882-1963: An American Tribute”

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• According to the teaching of our Lord, what is wrong with the world is precisely that it does not believe in God. Yet it is clear that the unbelief which he so bitterly deplored was not an intellectual persuasion of God's non-existence. Those whom he rebuked for their lack of faith were not men who denied God with the top of their minds, but men who, while apparently incapable of doubting him with the top of their minds, lived as though he did not exist.

  John Baillie

  Atheist, Believe, Teaching

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• You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

  Karl Marx

  Hands, Majority, Population

  Karl Marx (1950). “Communist Manifesto: The revolutionary text that changed the course of history”, p.1839, Harriman House Limited

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