Quotes About Existence

I could read my nonexistence in the clothes my mother had worn before I can remember her.

Elle morte, je n'avais plus aucune raison de m'accorder à la marche du Vivant supérieur (l'espèce). Ma particularité ne pourrait jamais plus s'universaliser (sinon, utopiquement, par l'écriture, dont le projet, dès lors, devait devenir l'unique but de ma vie).

Il m'importe peu de savoir si Dieu existe ou non ; mais ce que je sais et que je saurai jusqu'au bout, c'est qu'il n'aurait pas dû créer en même temps l'amour et la mort. Le Neutre, c'est ce Non irréductible : un Non comme suspendu devant les endurcissements de la foi et de la certitude et incorruptible par l'une et par l'autre.

el miedo es a la vez lo que está "en el origen de todo", una parodia del cogito cartesiano: "Tengo miedo, luego vivo"– y

It is philosophically impossible to be an atheist, since to be an atheist you must have infinite knowledge in order to know absolutely that there is no God. But to have infinite knowledge, you would have to be God yourself. It's hard to be God yourself and an atheist at the same time!

Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by that pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning.

It's hard to imagine a more extraordinary claim than that some hidden intelligence created a universe of more than a hundred billion galaxies, each containing more than a hundred billion stars, and then waited more than 13.7 billion years until a planet in a remote corner of a single galaxy evolved an atmosphere sufficiently oxygenated to support life, only to then reveal his existence to an assortment of violent tribal groups before disappearing again.

To argue that, in a universe in which there seems to be no purpose, our existence is without meaning or value is unparalleled solipsism, as it suggests that without us the universe is worthless. The greatest gift that science can give us is to allow us to overcome our need to be the center of existence even as we learn to appreciate the wonder of the accident we are privileged to witness.

If the universe doesn't care about us and if we're an accident in a remote corner of the universe, in some sense it makes us more precious. The meaning in our lives is provided by us; we provide our own meaning.

In this sense, science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God.

For most people, the central questions of existence ultimately come down to transcendental ones: Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here? Whatever presumptions one might bring to the question Why?, if we understand the how better, why will come into sharper focus.

why there is something rather than nothing: nothing is unstable.

But plausibility itself, in my view, is a tremendous step forward as we continue to marshal the courage to live meaningful lives in a universe that likely came into existence, and may fade out of existence, without purpose, and certainly without us at its center.

It is mere rubbish, thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.

As Einstein might have put it, only a very malicious (and, therefore, in his mind unimaginable) God would have conspired to have created a universe that so unambiguously points to a Big Bang origin without its having occurred.

Finally, and inevitably, the flat universe will further flatten into a nothingness that mirrors its beginning. Not only will there be no cosmologists to look out on the universe, there will be nothing for them to see even if they could. Nothing at all. Not even atoms. Nothing. If you think that's bleak and cheerless, too bad. Reality doesn't owe us comfort.

We need to live our experience as it is and with our eyes open. The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not.

Forget Jesus. Stars died so you could live.

Defining away the question by arguing that the buck stops with God may seem to obviate the issue of infinite regression, but here I invoke my mantra: The universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. The existence or nonexistence of a creator is independent of our desires. A world without God or purpose may seem harsh or pointless, but that alone doesn't require God to actually exist.

Why is there a universe at all? Why are we here?

T]he declaration of a First Cause still leaves open the question, Who created the creator? After all, what is the difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one?

Nevertheless, all of these phenomena imply that, under the right conditions, not only can nothing become something, it is required to.

Indeed, the best answer I have ever heard to the question of what it would be like to be dead (i.e., be nonbeing) is to imagine how it felt to be before you were conceived.

For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. —JAMES 4:14