Quotes About Existence

what do I need philosophy for? My answer is: In order to be able to deal with concrete, particular, real-life problems — i.e., in order to be able to live on earth.

To the extent to which a man is rational, life is the premise directing his actions. To the extent to which he is irrational, the premise directing his actions is death.

No, justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists.

Man's life is the standard of morality, but your own life is its purpose . If existence on earth is your goal, you must choose your actions and values by the standard of that which is proper to man—for the purpose of preserving, fulfilling and enjoying the irreplaceable value which is your life.

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been—for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy.

If joy is the aim and the core of existence, she thought, and if that which has the power to give one joy is always guarded as one's deepest secret, then they had seen each other naked in that moment.

He knew that the dread in these men's minds was not of the fact, but of his naming it—as if the fact had not existed, but his words held the power to make it exist.

We live in our minds, and existence is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality, to state it in gesture and form.

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes.

I trust that no one will tell me that men such as I write about don't exist. That this book has been written—and published—is my proof that they do.

One cannot hate the earth in their name. The earth is beautiful. And it is a background, but not theirs.

As to the role of emotions in art and the subconscious mechanism that serves as the integrating factor both in artistic creation and in man's response to art, they involve a psychological phenomenon which we call a sense of life. A sense of life is a pre-conceptual equivalent of metaphysics, an emotional, subconsciously integrated appraisal of man and of existence.

When thinkers accept those who deny the existence of thinking, as fellow thinkers of a different school of thought—it is they who achieve the destruction of the mind. They grant the enemy's basic premise, thus granting the sanction of reason to formal dementia. A basic premise is an absolute that permits no co-operation with its antithesis and tolerates no tolerance.

Men who have found tbe right way of life do not seek to escape from awareness, to obliterate their consciousness, and to drug themselves out of existence. Drug addiction is the confession of an unbearable inner state.

In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival—so that for you, who are a human being, the question 'to be or not to be' is the question 'to think or not to think.' "A

Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence, working for less than their barest survival, leaving nothing but scraps for their rulers to loot, refusing to think, to venture, to produce, when the ultimate collector of their profits and the final authority on truth or error was the whim of some gilded degenerate sanctioned as superior to reason by divine right and by grace of a club.

Since Objectivism requires the use of one's mind, those who attempt to take broad principles and apply them unthinkingly and indiscriminately to the concretes of their own existence find that it cannot be done. They are then compelled either to reject Objectivism or to apply it.

It was as if normal existence were a photograph of shapeless things in badly printed colors, but this was a sketch done in a few sharp strokes that made things seem clean, important—and worth doing.

By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.

It's not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.

justice has not ceased to exist. How could it? It is possible for men to abandon their sight of it, and then it is justice that destroys them. But it is not possible for justice to go out of existence, because one is an attribute of the other, because justice is the act of acknowledging that which exists. . .

Barre a un lado a esos parásitos de academia subsidiados, que viven de las ganancias de la mente de otros y proclaman que el hombre no necesita moral, ni valores, ni código de conducta. Esos, que se consideran científicos y aseguran que el hombre es sólo un animal, al que no conceden en el mapa de la existencia el lugar que le han concedido al más insignificante de los insectos.

There is only one helpful suggestion that I can give you: By the essence and nature of existence, contradictions cannot exist. If you find it inconceivable that an invention of genius should be abandoned among ruins, and that a philosopher should wish to work as a cook in a diner—check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

no es que yo no sufra; es que conozco la importancia del sufrimiento y sé que hay que luchar contra el dolor y eliminarlo y no aceptarlo nunca como parte integrante del alma, como herida permanente en la propia noción de la existencia.