“By way of that wretched sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is the wretched author explaining that we should be silent concerning Auschwitz, that Auschwitz doesn’t exist, or, rather, that it didn’t, for the only facts that cannot be explained are those that don’t or didn’t exist.”

— Imre Kertész , book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

Kaddish for a Child Not Born (1990)

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Imre Kertész 61

Hungarian writer 1929–2016

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“"Auschwitz cannot be explained." And yet, it doesn’t take a Wittgenstein to notice that the sentence is faulty even from the point of pure linguistic logic;”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

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“The sentence "Auschwitz cannot be explained" is faulty simply from a formal point of view, for anything that is has an explanation, even if by necessity a merely self-serving faulty, so so explanation.”

Imre Kertész book Kaddish for an Unborn Child

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“Ether is, in effect, a merely hypothetical entity, valuable only in so far as it explains that which by means of it we endeavor to explain — light, electricity, or universal gravitation — and only so far as these facts cannot be explained in any other way. In like manner the idea of God is also an hypothesis, valuable only in so far as it enables us to explain that which by means of it we endeavor to explain — the essence and existence of the Universe — and only so long as these cannot be explained in any other way. And since in reality we explain the Universe neither better nor worse with this idea than without it, the idea of God, the supreme petitio principii, is valueless.”

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The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God

“But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

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“The game which I was now playing in Auschwitz was dangerous. This sentence does not really convey the reality; in fact, I had gone far beyond what people in the real world consider dangerous.”

Witold Pilecki (1901–1948) World War II concentration camp leader and resistor

Source: Lawrence W. Reed, Witold Pilecki: Bravery Beyond Measure, 23 October 2015 https://fee.org/articles/he-volunteered-to-go-to-auschwitz/

“Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than “time.” Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence, to close on itself our quartet of questions, is a task for the future.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

"Hermann Weyl and the Unity of Knowledge" http://www.weylmann.com/wheeler.shtml, American Scientist (July-August 1986) Vol. 74, pp. 366-375. Reprinted in At Home in the Universe (1993), p. 171. http://books.google.com/books?id=w9BXAAAAYAAJ&q=%22hermann+weyl+and+the+unity+of+knowledge%22#search_anchor

“This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Reflections on a chestnut tree root.
Nausea (1938)
Context: Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.