Quotes About Existence

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us deep down. It's our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of.

but let's emphasize once more here that G. Cantor is, like R. Dedekind, a mathematical Platonist; i.e., he believes that both infinite sets and transfinite numbers really exist, as in metaphysically, and that they are reflected in actual real-world infinities.....

Y tomaba mi silencio por aprobación. La esencia del abismo era que ella creía que no existía ningún abismo

But if we can't think ourselves, ... that means we, ourselves, are things that can't think themselves, and so are the proper objects for our thought; we fulfill the game's condition, we are ourselves Other. So if we can think ourselves, we can't; and if we can't; we can. KABLAM, ... There go the old crania.

You just never quite occurred out there, kid,' deLint apprises him.

You just never quite occurred out there, kid.

CONSCIOUSNESS IS NATURE'S NIGHTMARE

David Foster Wallace

No, she simply felt - at times, mind you, not all the time, but at sharp and distinctive intuitive moments - as if she had no real existence, except for what she said and did and perceived and et cetera, and that these were, it seemed at such times, not really under her control. There was nothing pure.

David Foster Wallace

If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.

The point is this: If God does not exist, then life is objectively meaningless; but man cannot live consistently and happily knowing that life is meaningless; so in order to be happy he pretends life has meaning. But this is, of course, entirely inconsistent—for without God, man and the universe are without any real significance.

God exists necessarily and is the explanation why anything else exists.

If God is dead, then man is dead too.

But the problem becomes even worse. For, regardless of immortality, if there is no God, then there is no objective standard of right and wrong. All we're confronted with is, in Sartre's words, "the bare, valueless fact of existence." Moral values are either just expressions of personal taste or the by-products of biological evolution and social conditioning.

What sort of God would put us here in this goddamned, stinking slaughterhouse of a world?

et tamen nihil est sciens vel quiescens, nisi actualiter sit sciens vel quiescens.

Omnis homo praeter Sortem currit, igitur Plato currit et sic de aliis a Sorte.

If God does exist then it seems to me that rather than solve our problems for us, he or she instead provides us with the potential for great intelligence, understanding, wisdom, and compassion. It is then left up to us to use these to solve our own problems.

Everything alive is part of each of us, and many things which do not move as we move are part of us. The sun is part of us, the earth, the sky, the stars, the rivers, and the oceans. All things are part of us, and we have come here to enjoy them and to thank God for them.

Live, for this is the time of your life.