“In their brief primitive phase, the Fifth Men, like so many other races, sought to console themselves by unreasoning faith in a life after death, They conceived, for instance, that at death terrestrial beings embarked upon a career continuous with earthly life, but far more ample, either in some remote planetary system, or in some wholly distinct orb of space-time. But though such theories were never disproved in the primitive era, they gradually began to seem not merely improbable but ignoble.”

— Olaf Stapledon, book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter XII: The Last Terrestrials; Section 1, “The Cult of Evanescence” (p. 176)

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Olaf Stapledon113

British novelist and philosopher 1886–1950

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XII: A Stunted Cosmical Spirit (p. 151)

“I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate.”

Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011) American pathologist, euthanasia activist

Quoted in "Years of Minutes"‎ - Page 332 - by Andy Rooney - 2004
2000s, 2004

“When life is so burdensome death has become a sought after refuge.”

Herodotus book Histories

Book 7, Ch. 46.
The Histories

“Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.”

Miguel de Unamuno book The Tragic Sense of Life

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913)

“There is, in fact, but one great crime in the universe, and most of the instances of terrestrial wrong-doing are instances of this crime. It is the crime of exploitation—the considering by some beings of themselves as ends, and of others as their means—the refusal to recognize the equal, or the approximately equal, rights of all to life and its legitimate rewards—the crime of acting toward others as one would that others would not act toward him. For millions of years, almost ever since life began, this crime has been committed, in every nook and quarter of the inhabited globe.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"The Ethics of Human Beings Toward Non-human Beings", pp. 276–277
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

“Primitive Christianity cherished an ardent hope of a radically new era, and within its limits sought to realize a social life on a new moral basis. Thus Christianity as an historical movement was launched”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 143
Context: Primitive Christianity cherished an ardent hope of a radically new era, and within its limits sought to realize a social life on a new moral basis. Thus Christianity as an historical movement was launched with all the purpose and hope, all the impetus and power, of a great revolutionary movement, pledged to change the world-as-it-is into the world-as-it-ought-to-be.

“The truth is that other systems of geometry are possible, yet after all, these other systems are not spaces but other methods of space measurements. There is one space only, though we may conceive of many different manifolds, which are contrivances or ideal constructions invented for the purpose of determining space.”

Paul Carus (1852–1919) American philosopher

Science, Vol. 18 (1903), p. 106, as reported in Memorabilia Mathematica; or, The Philomath's Quotation-Book https://archive.org/stream/memorabiliamathe00moriiala#page/81/mode/2up, (1914), by Robert Edouard Moritz, p. 352

“No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become distinguished from other aspects of life: it's still embedded in religion, magic and social ceremonies.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 2: The Singing School

“Falloppio of Padua conceived that petrified shells had been generated by fermentation in the spots where they were found, or that they had in some cases acquired their form from 'the tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations.' Although a celebrated professor of anatomy, he taught that certain tusks of elephants dug up in his time at Puglia were mere earthy concretions, and, consistently with these principles, he even went so far as to consider it not improbable, that the vases of Monte Testaceo at Rome were natural impressions stamped in the soil.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 29
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

“It was as though some stubborn god spent their time in an immutable and absurd balancing act between life and death, prosperity and poverty.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 81

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