“The dread of death, an instinct so unfailing in all animals, exists, not because existence is intrinsically so sweet, nor because annihilation is so distressing, but because this bugaboo has been an indispensable safeguard against the suicide of the life process. The expectation of post-mortem consciousness, so prevalent and so insistent among human beings, is a hope arising from the concussion of a desire and a fancy—the desire to persist just referred to, and the fancy or hallucination of a double which originated among savages from shadows, images, dreams, and the like.”

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Derivation of the Nature of Living Beings, pp. 176–177

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 "The dread of death, an instinct so unfailing in all animals, exists, not because existence is intrinsically so sweet, n…" by J. Howard Moore?
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore 183
1862–1916

Related quotes

Henry Miller photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Why is anything intrinsically so valueless so obviously desirable?”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Source: Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went (1975), Chapter VI, An Instrument of Revolution, p. 62

Bolesław Prus photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Gregory Palamas photo

“Some people, because their minds have gone so long without nourishment, lose their desire to eat and so do not notice the harm they are suffering.”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

Source: The Parables of Jesus: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas

Yevgeniy Chazov photo

“I do not intend to argue the essence of these processes, all the more so because it has been proved that both types of memory function in the brain.”

Yevgeniy Chazov (1929) Russian physician

Tragedy and Triumph of Reason (1985)
Context: In medical science arguments are going on between behaviorists who perceive the function of brain as a multitude of simple and unconscious conditioned reflexes, and cognitivists who insist that humans sensing the surrounding world create its mental image which can be considered as memory of facts.
I do not intend to argue the essence of these processes, all the more so because it has been proved that both types of memory function in the brain. However, I am convinced that those who once saw a nuclear explosion or imagined the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will forever maintain the mental picture of horror-stricken and dust-covered Earth, burned bodies of the dead and wounded and people slowly dying of radiation disease. Prompted by the sense of responsibility for the fortunes of the human race, Einstein addressed the following warning to his colleagues: "Since we, scientists, face the tragic lot of further increasing the murderous effectiveness of the means of destruction, it is our most solemn and noble duty to prevent the use of these weapons for the cruel ends they were designed to achieve".

“Animals are among the first inhabitants of the mind's eye. They are basic to the development of speech and thought. Because of their part in the growth of consciousness, they are inseparable from the series of events in each human life, indispensable to our becoming human in the fullest sense.”

Paul Shepard (1925–1996) American human ecologist

Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence (1978), University of Georgia Press, 1998, Chapter 1, p. 2 https://books.google.it/books?id=rSu9AQAAQBAJ&pg=PA2.

Larry Bird photo

“Basketball has been my life and I worked at it so hard because I enjoyed it so much.”

Larry Bird (1956) basketball player and coach

Sam Smith (December 25, 1991) "Bird Still Celtics' Main Man - At Age 35, He's Enjoying Basketball More Than Ever", Chicago Tribune, p. 1.

Related topics