“As the romance of manned space exploration has waned, the drive today is to find our living, thinking counterparts in the universe. For all the excitement, however, the search betrays a profound melancholy — a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence.”

— Charles Krauthammer

2010s, 2011, Are we alone in the universe? (2011)

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Charles Krauthammer 78

American journalist 1950–2018

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“…there is something about time and space that is not real, and something about us that is. However man may have tumbled into this world of indefinite space, he does not belong to it at all. Real space for him is the eternal here; where we are is always the center of the universe, and the circumference of the universe, just as real time is the 'eternal Now' of our personal experience.”

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Source: "Quotes", Fearful Symmetry : A Study of William Blake (1947), p. 46

“I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?”

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

So ist langsam an Stelle einer tiefsinnigen Ausdeutung der ewig gleichen Probleme ein historisches, ja selbst ein philologisches Abwägen und Fragen getreten: was der und jener Philosoph gedacht habe oder nicht, oder ob die und jene Schrift ihm mit Recht zuzuschreiben sei oder gar ob diese oder jene Lesart den Vorzug verdiene. Zu einem derartigen neutralen Sichbefassen mit Philosophie werden jetzt unsere Studenten in den philosophischen Seminarien unserer Universitäten angereizt: weshalb ich mich längst gewöhnt habe, eine solche Wissenschaft als Abzweigung der Philologie zu betrachten und ihre Vertreter danach abzuschätzen, ob sie gute Philologen sind oder nicht. Demnach ist nun freilich die Philosophie selbst von der Universität verbannt: womit unsre erste Frage nach dem Bildungswert der Universitäten beantwortet ist.
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Herman Melville book Pierre: or, The Ambiguities

Bk. XIV, ch. 1
A paraphrase of the last portion of this has sometimes been cited as a quotation of Melville: God's one and only voice is silence.
Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852)

“"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.”

Julian Jaynes (1920–1997) American psychologist

As quoted in LIFE magazine (December 1988) http://www.humancondition.info/Beyond/ScienceReligion.html

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Charles Krauthammer 78

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