“Whoever says he knows that immortality is a fact is merely hoping that it is.”

Source: Why I am Not a Believer (1926), p. 140

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Whoever says he knows that immortality is a fact is merely hoping that it is." by Carl Van Doren?
Carl Van Doren photo
Carl Van Doren 14
American biographer 1885–1950

Related quotes

Simone Weil photo

“We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), Detachment (1947), p. 260

Margaret Fuller photo

“I am immortal! I know it! I feel it!
Hope floods my heart with delight!”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Dryad Song (1900)
Context: I am immortal! I know it! I feel it!
Hope floods my heart with delight!
Running on air mad with life dizzy, reeling,
Upward I mount, — faith is sight, life is feeling,
Hope is the day-star of might!

John Connolly photo
Douglas Adams photo
Pierre Trudeau photo
Samuel Butler photo

“To himself every one is an immortal: he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ignorance of Death
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIII - Death

Gertrude Stein photo

“I was talking like this to the Princeton professor and he said well if these are the facts there is no hope and I said well what is hope hope is just contact with the facts.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3

Gregory Benford photo

“Every boy knows he is immortal, but his parents, they are not so sure.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 2 “Aleph”, Chapter 1 (p. 45)
Against Infinity (1983)

Albert Camus photo

“To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.”

Kirilov
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation

Related topics