Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
"Is There a God?" (1952)
1950s
Context: When I come to my own beliefs, I find myself quite unable to discern any purpose in the universe, and still more unable to wish to discern one.
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist
"The Oneness of Mind", as translated in Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (1984) edited by Ken Wilber
Context: Consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world. If I say that there cannot be more than one consciousness in the same mind, this seems a blunt tautology — we are quite unable to imagine the contrary...
C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Variant: "... the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), p. 326
“The universe,” says Wyvern, “is a Ph. D. thesis that God was unable to successfully defend.”
James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter
Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 13 (p. 221)
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: But if ether is nothing but an hypothesis explanatory of light, air on the other hand, is a thing that is directly felt; and even if it did not enable us to explain the phenomenon of sound, we should nevertheless always be directly aware of it, and above all, of the lack of it in moments of suffocation or air-hunger. And in the same way God Himself, not the idea of God, may become a reality that is immediately felt; and even though the idea of God does not enable us to explain either the existence or essence of the Universe, we have at times the direct feeling of God, above all in moments of spiritual suffocation. And the feeling, mark it well, for all that is tragic in it and the whole tragic sense of life is founded upon this — this feeling is a feeling of hunger for God, of the lack of God. To believe in God is, in the first instance... to wish that there may be a God, to be unable to live without Him.
John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States
Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 22 U.S. (9 Wheaton) 738, 866 (1824)
William Stanley Jevons The Theory of Political Economy
Source: The Theory of Political Economy (1871), Chapter VII, Theory of Capital, p. 209.
Diadochos of Photiki (400–486) Byzantine saint
§ 27
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)