Quotes About Existence

Arthur, sie ziehen die Grenzen zu eng. Ich verrate Ihnen ein Geheimnis, ein sehr großes und streng gehütetes Geheimnis, von dem alle wissen, außer Ihnen. Das hier ist ein Traum. Ich meine das nicht philosophisch, Gott bewahre! Es ist wirklich einer. Und zwar Ihrer. Wir alle gehören dazu, jeder von uns ist Ihre Erfindung. Wenn Sie aufwachen, sind wir weg, nichts mehr, gelöscht, es hat uns nie gegeben.

What is death? Fundamentally it is not extinction and those seconds when life ends, but the slow decline that precedes it, that creeping debility that extends over years: the time in which a person is still there and yet not there, in which he can still imagine that although his prime is long since past, it lingers yet. So circumspectly has nature organized our death!

It was both odd and injust, a real example of the pitiful arbitrariness of existence, that you were born into a particular time and held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.

Giacché ci troviamo al mondo senza che nessuno ce lo abbia chiesto, tanto vale provare a realizzare qualcosa.

Das, dachte er, ist es. Leben müssen, obgleich alles vorbei ist. Disponieren, organisieren: jeden Tag, jede Stunde und Minute. Als hätte es noch Sinn

Ma quei morti erano così vecchi che non li si poteva chiamare nemmeno cadaveri. Tutto il mondo in definitiva è composto di corpi morti! Ogni manciata di terra è stata un uomo e prima ancora un altro uomo, ogni oncia d'aria è stata respirata migliaia di volte da esseri nel frattempo morti. Cosa avevano tutti, qual era il problema?

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

There is no God and Mary is his mother." —GEORGE SANTAYANA, AMERICAN-SPANISH PHILOSOPHER (1863–1952), AMERICAN PRAGMATIST (SORT OF)

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

The idea that life's meaning is not something to look for but something to create myself feels right to me. In fact, it seems absolutely essential.

Materialism: The philosophical position that there is only one thing in the universe: stuff, matter. Anything other than matter is either reducible to matter, as thoughts are reducible to the matter of a brain doing its thing, or doesn't exist, like the Tooth Fairy.

To begin, a man who aspires to this kind of personal honesty must throw off all interpretations of himself that depend on anything that supposedly transcends his life, such as a god or a soul. Man exists here in this world, so that must be his point of departure. Staying free from his psychological and intellectual inheritance will be a continual struggle for him, an ever-lurking danger.

The meaning of life is not something we look for, it is something we create. And by contemplating suicide, we can be fully present at our own creation.

Metaphysics: One of the main topics of philosophy and a bit of a catchall for everything that isn't logic, epistemology, or ethics. Metaphysics looks at the Big Picture: What is "being"? What is the cosmos and what is it made of? Also, incidentally, what is the meaning of life?

Nihilism: Negativity as an approach to philosophy and life. Various types of Nihilism range from negating the existence of everything to negating the possibility of knowing anything to just negating social and political mores and morality in general. Not a reassuring philosophy. Always reminds me of King Lear's line, "Nothing will come of nothing.

Are good and evil of importance to the universe or only to man?

The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unlived life worth examining?" —ADAM PHILLIPS, BRITISH PSYCHOANALYST AND PHILOSOPHER (1954–), FREUDIAN EXISTENTIALIST

First, we exist, and next, we create ourselves.

And therein lies a realization I had recently: Even in my darkest moments, I cannot think of my daughter's life or my granddaughter's life as meaningless. Their mere existence feels meaningful to me whenever I think about them. How could such vital and beautiful creatures possibly be insignificant? Yes, these are the sentimental thoughts of an old codger, but do take note, Teacher.

Meaninglessness in philosophical nihilism covers a wide spectrum, ranging from Metaphysical Nihilism, a negation of all existence, to Moral and Political Nihilism, a negation of a society's values and laws in a world that we acknowledge exists but has the potential to be better. In this last sense, it is easy to see how breaking away from the inherited truths of society, governments, and religion can make life more enjoyable in an old-fashioned, hedonistic sort of way.

George Berkeley makes the case that all our knowledge of the world comes to us through our senses, so in the end all we've really got is this sense data inside our heads. We cannot claim that is a chair out there, only that we have some chair sense data in our minds. So it is impossible to claim that the chair is anything more than a bunch of sensory experiences that we cobble together in our minds and call a "chair.

It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." —THOMAS NAGEL, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER (1937–), ETHICIST AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER

I live with the fact that I don't know if there really is any meaningful cosmic order and, God knows, that is a continual frustration. But I don't understand why it should be any more frustrating to know that there is a grand design but I am unable to understand it. In both cases, I am in the cosmic dark.

In the past hundred years, since Logical Positivists like Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer have argued that the idea of a rational basis for ethics is as impossible as a rational basis for the existence of God—or of the Tooth Fairy