Quotes About Existence

All beliefs about matters of fact or real existence are derived merely from something that is present to the memory or senses, and a customary association of that with some other thing.

How can anything that exists from eternity have a cause, since that relation implies a priority in time and a beginning of existence?

Art may make a suit of clothes, but nature must produce a man.

Theology, as it proves the existence of a Diety, and the immortality of souls, is composed partly of reasonings concerting particular partly concerning general fact. It has foundation in reason, so far as it is supported be experience . But it's best and most solid foundation is faith and divine revelation.

However consistent the world may be, allowing certain suppositions and conjectures, with the idea of such a Deity, it can never afford us an inference concerning his existence.

The confusion, in which impressions are sometimes involved, proceeds only from their faintness and unsteadiness, not from any capacity in the mind to receive any impression, which in its real existence has no particular degree nor proportion. That is a contradiction in terms; and even implies the flattest of all contradictions, viz. that it is possible for the same thing both to be and not to be.

When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist.

Truth is of two kinds, consisting either in the discovery of the proportions of ideas, consider'd as such, or in the conformity of our ideas of objects to their real existence (Hume, 1739, p. 495).

El mundo es tal vez el bosquejo rudimentario de algún dios infantil, que lo abandonó a medio hacer, avergonzado de su ejecución deficiente; es obra de un dios subalterno, de quien los dioses superiores se burlan; es la confusa producción de una divinidad decrépita y jubilada, que ya se ha muerto

Así, cuando afirmamos que Dios existe nos formamos simplemente la idea de un ser tal como nos es presentado, y la existencia que le atribuimos no es concebida por una idea particular que unamos a la idea de sus otras cualidades y que pueda nuevamente ser separada y distinguida de ellas.

No tenemos una idea perfecta de nada más que de una percepción. Una substancia es enteramente diferente de una percepción. Por consiguiente, no tenemos una idea de substancia.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

The identity that we ascribe to things is only a fictitious one, established by the mind, not a peculiar nature belonging to what we're talking about.

How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And, after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression? Let us remember the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. It was never more applicable than to the present subject. If the material world rests upon a similar ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some other; and so on, without end. It were better, therefore, never to look beyond the present material world.

There is no past, memory paints it,' Ã¢â'¬Â the pope recited. " Ã¢â'¬ËœThere is no future, for hope shapes it. There is only the present, but it is always escaping us.

Infinite love is the only truth. Everything else is illusion.

If we identify with a polarity we create the other. A belief in the 'Light' means that you must believe in the 'Dark' or you would not have to call it 'Light'. It would just be, no labels necessary.

We go through our lives thinking we are living in the present when in truth we are living in the past and the future.

The extraterrestrials who are dubbed "aliens" are actually other aspects of ourselves. They are not "alien" at all. They are part of us.

Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides.

Now I have to say I'm a complete atheist, I have no religious views myself and no spiritual views, except very watered down humanistic spiritual views, and consciousness is just a fact of life, it's a natural fact of life.

Some say that consciousness is an "illusion," but I have little idea what this could even mean. It seems to me that we are surer of the existence of conscious experience than we are of anything else in the world.

Simulations are not illusions. Virtual worlds are real. Virtual objects really exist.

The lesson taught by the war was clear: to be human is to be small, powerless, and subject to the forces of randomness.