“The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.”

Comment on Scott Aaronson's "Does it come with a 14-Gyr warranty?" http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=265#comment-7403
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Quoted in Comic Sections (1993) by Desmond MacHale

All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them. (trans. Meric Casaubon).
Οἱ ἄνθρωποι γεγόνασιν ἀλλήλων ἕνεκεν· ἢ δίδασκε οὖν ἢ φέρε.
VIII, 59
Variant: Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.
Source: Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VIII

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 21
Context: If thought exists, I who think and the world about which I think also exist; the one exists but for the other, having no possible separation between them. Therefore, the world and I are both in active correlation; I am that which sees the world, and the world is that which is seen by me. I exist for the world and the world exists for me. … One sure and primary and fundamental fact is the joint existence of a subject and of its world. The one does not exist without the other. I acquire no understanding of myself except as I take account of objects, of the surroundings. I do not think unless I think of things — and there I find myself.

The Contemporary Review
Context: AHow, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. Rights are not things which grow by using the multiplication table. here are two men. If there are such things as rights, these two men must evidently start with equal rights. How shall you, then, by multiplying one of the two, even a thousand times over, give him larger rights than the other, since each new unit that appears only brings with him his own rights; or how, by multiplying one of the units up to the point of exhausting the powers of the said multiplication table, shall you take from the other the rights with which he started?

The Sounds of Taqwa (2006)
Context: When it comes to "Islam" —  I look at the word as the verbal noun it is: an action word. I see Islam as something someone does, not something someone "belongs to". I believe that "religion", as the world commonly knows it today, is a divisive factor in community. When I was about 15 years old, I renounced a belief in the importance of "religion", seeking rather to find answers to life's questions. My spiritual quest has always been to bring me closer to my purpose in life, a better relationship with the force that brought me into existence, and how to relate to fellow human beings. When I was 17, I started reading scriptures from around the world and the more I read the more commonality I saw between them all. When I discovered the Qur'an at the age of 20, it seemed to be the most organic in its message. I got out of "religion" and got into life. To this day, I renounce a trust in the institutions of "religion".

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Give Me Liberty (1936)
Context: The picture of the economic revolution as the final step to freedom was false as soon as I asked myself that question. For, in actual fact, The State, The Government, cannot exist. They are abstract concepts, useful enough in their place, as the theory of minus numbers is useful in mathematics. In actual living experience, however, it is impossible to subtract anything from nothing; when a purse is empty, it is empty, it cannot contain a minus ten dollars. On this same plane of actuality, no State, no Government, exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men.