Quotes About Existence

Strange is our situation here on Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men – above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends. ALBERT EINSTEIN

God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.

But we exist now. We are caring, intelligent animals and can treasure our brief lives. Why is eternal better than temporal, or supernatural higher than natural? Doesn't rarity increase value? God is an idea, not a natural creature. Why should his image be more valuable than our own nature?

More generally, if living things didn't work actively to prevent it, they would eventually merge into their surroundings, and cease to exist as autonomous beings. That is what happens when they die.

Humans have always wondered about the meaning of life... life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA... life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.

Some of life must be devoted to living itself; some of life must be devoted to doing something worthwhile with one's life, not just to perpetuating it.

Az értelmes élet egy bolygón akkor éri el a nagykorúságot, amikor elsÅ' ízben dolgozza ki saját létének indoklását.

As I have put it before, if the second dinosaur to the left of the tall cycad tree had not happened to sneeze and thereby fail to catch the tiny, shrew-like ancestor of all the mammals, we would none of us be here. We all can regard ourselves as exquisitely improbable. But here, in a triumph of hindsight, we are.

Only human beings guide their behaviour by a knowledge of what happened before they were born and a preconception of what may happen after they are dead; thus only humans find their way by a light that illuminates more than the patch of ground they stand on. P. B. and J. S. MEDAWAR, The Life Science (1977)

Eu me divirto com a estratégia, quando me perguntam se sou ateu, de lembrar que o autor da pergunta também é ateu no que diz respeito a Zeus, Apolo, Amon Rá, Mithra, Baal, Thor, Wotan, o Bezerro de Outro e o Monstro de Espaguete Voador. Eu só fui um deus além.

When people say they are atheists they don't mean they can prove that there are no gods. Strictly speaking, it's impossible to prove that something does not exist. We don't positively know there are no gods

The chances of each of us coming into existence are infinitesimally small, and even though we shall all die some day, we should count ourselves fantastically lucky to get our decades in the sun.

Humans are only one of many things, and all these things long to live, and the highest form of living is freedom: a man to be a man, a cloud to be a cloud, bamboo to be bamboo.

One man's feeling is not always equal to all life is. Sometimes it's not equal to anything much at all.

A world of dew and within every dewdrop a world of struggle. ISSA

One man's feeling is not always equal to all that life is. Sometimes it's not equal to anything much at all.

All life is only allegory and the real story is not here...

The world is, she would say. It just is, boy.

Rock to gravel to dust to mud to rock and so the world goes, as his mother used to say when he demanded reasons or explanation as to how the world got to be this way or that. The world is, she would say. It just is, boy.

Because not to fear was to imagine a world beyond experience. And that was too much for anybody.

In the end all that was left was the heat and the clouds of rain, and insects and birds and animals and vegetation that neither knew nor cared. Humans are only one of many things, and all these things long to live, and the highest form of living is freedom: a man to be a man, a cloud to be a cloud, bamboo to be bamboo. Decades

You see, reason, gentlemen, is a fine thing, that is unquestionable, but reason is only reason and satisfies only man's reasoning capacity, while wanting is a manifestation of the whole of life. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Without love, what was the world?