“Futility is the defining characteristic of life. Pain is proof of existence”
Thomas Covenant
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Stephen R. Donaldson 18
Novelist 1947Related quotes
"One Half of a Manifesto," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

“The great object of life is sensation- to feel that we exist, even though in pain.”

“Existence proofs always trump theory. That’s engineering.”
Source: Short fiction, The Man Who Sold The Moon (2014), p. 135

“Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.”
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)
Mathematics and Mathematicians (1992); published in Is Mathematics Inevitable? A Miscellany (2008), edited by Underwood Dudley, p. 3. ISBN 0883855666

“The interest I have in believing in something is not a proof that the something exists.”
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 29 (quoting Voltaire)

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Source: "Microeconomic systems as an experimental science," 1982, p. 925.
Source: Assigning Meanings to Programs http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~weimer/2007-615/reading/FloydMeaning.pdf (1967), pp. 19–20.