Quotes About Existence

If you want guarantees in life, then you don't want life. You want rehearsals for a script that's already been written. Life by its nature cannot have guarantees, or its whole purpose is thwarted.

Nothing in this world is real

So now live for real, Craig. Live. Live. Live. Live.

You shouldn't be able to be alive and you are. You want to trade?

Time is a person-made concept.

I wish I was Dumbo the Octopus. Adapted to freezing deep-ocean temperatures, I'd flop around down there at peace. The big concerns of my life would be what sort of bottom-coating slime to feed off of—that's not so different from now—plus I wouldn't have any natural predators; then again, I don't have any now, and that hasn't done me a whole lot of good. But it suddenly makes sense: I'd like to be under the sea, as an octopus.

I'm not afraid of dying; I'm only afraid of living

I'm not afraid of dying; I'm afraid of living.

It's just… a possibility, like it's a possibility that I could turn to dust in the next instant and be disseminated throughout the universe as an omniscient consciousness. It's not a very likely possibility.

Tiny places have all the drama and beauty necessary for a universe.

Time is a person-made concept." "Really? Where'd you hear that?" "I made it up." "I don't know if that's true. We all live within time. It rules us." "I use my time how I want, so I rule it.

I'm not afraid of dying; I'm afraid of living.

And what is that nightmare, Craig? Life. Life is a nightmare. Yes.

Life is so gorgeous, the mystery is we are not always deliriously happy.

We do not simply live in this universe. The universe lives within us.

So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?

So what is true for life itself is no less true for the universe: knowing where you came from is no less important than knowing where you are going.

The cosmic perspective shows Earth to be a mote. But it's a precious mote and, for the moment, it's the only home we have.

The four most common chemically active elements in the universe—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen—are the four most common elements of life on Earth. We are not simply in the universe. The universe is in us.

Yes, not only humans but also every other organism in the cosmos, as well as the planets or moons on which they thrive, would not exist but for the wreckage of spent stars. So you're made of detritus. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?

And yes, every one of our body's atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnaces within high-mass stars that exploded more than five billion years ago. We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out - and we have only just begun.

Like the microscopic strands of DNA that predetermine the identity of a macroscopic species and the unique propertires of its members, the modern look and feel of the cosmos was writ in the fabric of its earliest moments, and carried relentlessly through time and space. We feel it when we look up. We feel it when we look down. We feel it when we look within.

Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego.

People who believe themselves ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the cosmos. And therein lies a fascinating dichotomy. "The universe always was," gets no respect as a legitimate answer to "What was around before the beginning?" But for many religious people, the answer, "God always was," is the obvious and pleasing answer to "What was around before God?