“I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.”
I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)
1970s
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Buckminster Fuller171
American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inv… 1895–1983Related quotes
“I think that I am here, on this earth,
To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know.”
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"Consciousness," trans. Czesław Miłosz and Robert Hass
Unattainable Earth (1986)
Context: I think that I am here, on this earth,
To present a report on it, but to whom I don't know.
As if I were sent so that whatever takes place
Has meaning because it changes into memory.
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor
Boccioni's quote, from an undated letter to Gino Severini (probably July or August 1912, or November); as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008.
1912
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
"Angel Surrounded by Paysans" (1949)
Context: I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.
Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again,
Cleared of its stiff and stubborn, man-locked set
And, in my hearing, you hear its tragic drone
Rise liquidly in liquid lingerings,
Like watery words awash; like meanings said
By repetitions of half-meanings. Am I not,
Myself, only half a figure of a sort,
A figure half seen, or seen for a moment, a man
Of the mind, an apparition appareled in
Apparels of such lightest look that a turn
Of my shoulders and quickly, too quickly, I am gone?
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment
Conversations with a Lady on the Plurality of Worlds or Etretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes (1686) as quoted by Mark Brake, Alien Life Imagined: Communicating the Science and Culture of Astrobiology (2012)
Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison.
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
“I am old. I am young. I am Gwion,
I am universal, I am possessed of penetrating wit.”
Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard
A tradition about Taliesin states that he was once a boy named "Gwion".
Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The First Address of Taliesin
Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist
Source: 1961 - 1980, transcript of a public forum at Boston university', conducted by Joseph Ablow 1966, pp. 73-75