Quotes about absence (669 quotes, page 7)

“They look upon all obligations, not as moral, but as social, and even then not really as obligations except as these have been consciously and voluntarily assumed. If a man makes an agreement with men, the latter may combine to hold him to his agreement; but, in the absence of such agreement, no man, so far as the Anarchists are aware, has made any agreement with God or with any other power of any order whatsoever.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

The Relation of the State to the Invididual (1890)
Context: What relations should exist between the State and the Individual? The general method of determining these is to apply some theory of ethics involving a basis of moral obligation. In this method the Anarchists have no confidence. The idea of moral obligation, of inherent rights and duties, they totally discard. They look upon all obligations, not as moral, but as social, and even then not really as obligations except as these have been consciously and voluntarily assumed. If a man makes an agreement with men, the latter may combine to hold him to his agreement; but, in the absence of such agreement, no man, so far as the Anarchists are aware, has made any agreement with God or with any other power of any order whatsoever. The Anarchists are not only utilitarians, but egoists in the farthest and fullest sense. So far as inherent right is concerned, might is its only measure.

Men , God

“Almost all thinking men who have studied the laws which govern the animate and the inanimate world around us, agree that the belief in the existence of one Supreme Creator, possessed of infinite wisdom and power, is open to far less difficulties than the supposition of the absence of any cause, or of the existence of a plurality of causes.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

" Passages from the life of a philosopher https://archive.org/stream/passagesfromlif01babbgoog#page/n10/mode/2up", The Belief In The Creator From His Works, p. 400-401
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
Context: There remains a third source from which we arrive at the knowledge of the existence of a supreme Creator, namely, from an examination of his works. Unlike transmitted testimony, which is weakened at every stage, this evidence derives confirmation from the progress of the individual as well as from the advancement of the knowledge of the race.
Almost all thinking men who have studied the laws which govern the animate and the inanimate world around us, agree that the belief in the existence of one Supreme Creator, possessed of infinite wisdom and power, is open to far less difficulties than the supposition of the absence of any cause, or of the existence of a plurality of causes.

Wisdom , Men , World , Law

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
Context: I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.

Courageous , Fear , Courage , Learning

“In its proper meaning equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed, a constitution which guarantees democratic rights to all sections of the population, the right to approach the court for protection or relief in the case of the violation of rights guaranteed in the constitution, and the right to take part in the administration of justice as judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, law advisers and similar positions.
In the absence of these safeguards the phrase 'equality before the law', in so far as it is intended to apply to us, is meaningless and misleading.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, First court statement (1962)
Context: In its proper meaning equality before the law means the right to participate in the making of the laws by which one is governed, a constitution which guarantees democratic rights to all sections of the population, the right to approach the court for protection or relief in the case of the violation of rights guaranteed in the constitution, and the right to take part in the administration of justice as judges, magistrates, attorneys-general, law advisers and similar positions.
In the absence of these safeguards the phrase 'equality before the law', in so far as it is intended to apply to us, is meaningless and misleading. All the rights and privileges to which I have referred are monopolized by whites, and we enjoy none of them. The white man makes all the laws, he drags us before his courts and accuses us, and he sits in judgement over us.

Justice , Law , Parting

“But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look, and won't turn tail should they find it — and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway, because nothing, neither the terrible truth, nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth's sweet gas.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Context: How can one person be more real than any other? Well some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are hiding — escaping encounters, avoiding suprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the Pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience — maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who are afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jackleg humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of liars hell. Some folks hide and some folks seek, and seeking when its mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous, can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look, and won't turn tail should they find it — and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway, because nothing, neither the terrible truth, nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of earth's sweet gas.

Truth , Time , Cheating

“The Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

God , Light , Evil

“Wealth in India, as in every other ancient culture, was limited to the few. Mystical activities were also the preoccupation of but a handful of people. It is true, however, that acceptance of such activities was characteristic of the majority… whereas in some other cultures the rope-trick would have been ascribed to the promptings of the devil and reference to it suppressed, in India it was regarded with amused benevolence. The fundamental sanity of Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan.”

Romila Thapar (1931) Indian historian

Romila Thapar, ‘A history of India 1. Pelican. (also quoted in https://aboutfilm.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/romila-thapar-%E2%80%93-a-history-of-india-and-the-absence-of-satan/ https://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2012/04/romila-thapar-on-hinduism.html)

Wealth , People

“The absence of the improbable, the redundancy of the probable, is just as much conclusive evidence against conformity with scientific law as the too frequent occurrence of the improbable itself.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

Law

“First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death

Despair , Loss , Beauty , Dreams

“I have a term I came up with called fusion fiction – that’s what it felt like, with the absence of full stops, the long sentences. The form is very free-flowing and it allowed me to be inside the characters’ heads and go all over the place – the past, the present. For me, there’s always a level of experimentation – I’m not happy writing what we might call traditional novels…”

Bernardine Evaristo (1959) British writer

On what she calls her writing style in “Bernardine Evaristo: ‘I want to put presence into absence’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girl-woman-other-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 27)

Past , Happiness

“I wanted to put presence into absence. I was very frustrated that black British women weren’t visible in literature. I whittled it down to 12 characters – I wanted them to span from a teenager to someone in their 90s, and see their trajectory from birth, though not linear. There are many ways in which otherness can be interpreted in the novel – the women are othered in so many ways and sometimes by each other. I wanted it to be identified as a novel about women as well.”

Bernardine Evaristo (1959) British writer

On her novel Girl, Woman, Other in “Bernardine Evaristo: ‘I want to put presence into absence’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girl-woman-other-interview in The Guardian (2019 Apr 27)

Way , Birth , Literature , Women

“Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be a possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state. Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it. In the Buddhist tradition the analogy of the sun appearing from behind the clouds is often used to explain the discovery of enlightenment. In meditation practice we clear away the confusion of ego in order to glimpse the awakened state. The absence of ignorance, of being crowded in, of paranoia, opens up a tremendous view of life. One discovers a different way of being.”

Chögyam Trungpa book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Sun , Life , Appearance , Way

“Magic has been confounded too long with the jugglery of mountebanks, the hallucinations of disordered minds and the crimes of certain unusual malefactors. There are otherwise many who would promptly explain Magic as the art of producing effects in the absence of causes; and on the strength of such a definition it will be said by ordinary people — with the good sense which characterises the ordinary, in the midst of much injustice — that Magic is an absurdity.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Introduction
The History Of Magic (1860)

Sense , People , Art

“I think people have to hit rock bottom to really know their faculties because they have to use those faculties to get out of that rock bottom. I really had to feel profoundly lonely to get myself out of the feeling of being profoundly lonely. But it was always there, that feeling of loneliness and existing with the absence of something that had been stripped from me.”

Terese Marie Mailhot (1983) First Nation Canadian writer, journalist, memoirist, teacher

On being hospitalized for depression in “Terese Mailhot: Truth Is My Aesthetic” https://www.guernicamag.com/terese-mailhot-truth-is-my-aesthetic/ in Guernica Magazine (2018 Mar 21)

Feeling , Thinking , Loneliness , People

“Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 2, The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 28

Freedom

“Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 15

Freedom , Men

“Laws without supporting moral conventions invite crime, but much more importantly, they spur the growth of an expedient, amoral attitude. In our kind of society - with its absence of pre-capitalist traditions - the only way to do away with training devices is to change the laws and their enforcement so that, unlike the current income tax, they do not depend upon individual integrity. Another way is to pass only laws that result from great social movements with concomitant changes in moral codes, but there is no such movement underway in any area of American society today.”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

"Diagnosis of Our Moral Uneasiness"
Power, Politics, and People (1963)

Dependency , Law , Support , Way

“On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It is difficult to imagine life without them At the same time, there is reluctance to face the realities hidden within them, a fear of thinking about what happens inside them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives and, at the same time, it is absent from our lives. To think about this simultaneous presence and absence is to begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in shaping the way we interact with our social surroundings. We take prisons for granted but are often afraid to face the realities they produce.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Source: Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003), Chapter One

Fear , Time , Imagination , People

“In the face of all this, many of the standard ideas of science fiction seem to me to pale by comparison. I see the relative absence of these things and the distortions of scientific thinking often encountered in science fiction as terrible wasted opportunities. Real science is as amenable to exciting and engrossing fiction as fake science, and I think it is important to exploit every opportunity to convey scientific ideas in a civilization which is both based upon science and does almost nothing to ensure that science is understood.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 9, “Science Fiction—A Personal View” (p. 166)

Idea , Science , Thinking

“Our perceptions may be distorted by training and prejudice or merely because of the limitations of our sense organs, which, of course, perceive directly but a small fraction of the phenomena of the world. Even so straightforward a question as whether in the absence of friction a pound of lead falls faster than a gram of fluff was answered incorrectly by Aristotle and almost everyone else before the time of Galileo. Science is based on experiment, on a willingness to challenge old dogma, on an openness to see the universe as it really is. Accordingly, science sometimes requires courage—at the very least the courage to question the conventional wisdom.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter , “” (pp. 15-16)

Courage , Time , Question , Universe

“It has been often thought that the opposition to reincarnation has been solely based on prejudice, when not due to a dogma which can only stand when the mind is bound down and prevented from using its own powers. It is a doctrine the most noble of all, and with its companion one of Karma, next to be considered, it alone gives the basis for ethics. There is no doubt in my mind that the founder of Christianity took it for granted and that its present absence from that religion is the reason for the contradiction between the professed ethics of Christian nations and their actual practises which are so contrary to the morals given out by Jesus.”

William Quan Judge (1851–1896) American occult writer

The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge (1893), Chapter 8, Of Reincarnation

Religion

“How, it may be asked, are we to make ourselves capable of sharing in this great work? Well, there is no mystery as to the qualifications which are needed by one who aspires to be a helper; the difficulty is not in learning what they are, but in developing them in oneself. To some extent they have been already incidentally described, but it is nevertheless as well that they should be set out fully and categorically. Single-mindedness… Perfect self-control… Calmness. This is another most important point - the absence of all worry and depression. Much of the work consists in soothing those who are disturbed, and cheering those who are in sorrow; and how can a helper do that work if his own aura is vibrating with constant fuss and worry, or grey with the deadly gloom that comes from perpetual depression? Nothing is more hopelessly fatal to occult progress or usefulness than our nineteenth century habit of ceaselessly worrying over trifles - of eternally making mountains out of molehills…. Knowledge…. while the slightest taint of selfishness remains in a man, he is not yet fit to be entrusted……..”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 14

Selfishness , Mountain , Learning , Knowledge

“Peace does not simply mean the absence of conflict… There can therefore be no real peace without justice or consent… Peace does not fare well where poverty and deprivation reign… It is very significant that there has never been a war between genuine and universal democracies. There have been countless wars between totalitarian and authoritarian states. There have been wars between democracies and dictatorships - most often in defense of democratic values or in response to aggression.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Nobel Peace Prize speech (10 December 1993)
1990s

Democracy , Peace , Justice , War

“The mythology built around the Civil War—that victory by the North eradicated slavery and all of its vestiges throughout our nation—has obscured our discussions of the impact of chattel slavery and made it difficult to have a national dialogue on how to fully account for its place in American history and public policy. While it is nearly impossible to determine how the lives touched by slavery could have flourished in the absence of bondage, we have certain datum that permits us to examine how a subset of Americans – African Americans – have been affected by the callousness of involuntary servitude. We know that in almost every segment of society – education, healthcare, jobs and wealth – the inequities that persist in America are more acutely and disproportionately felt in Black America.”

Sheila Jackson Lee (1950) American politician

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee Statement on the Historic Hearing on H.R. 40 - a Bill to Establish a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans (19 June 2019)

History , War , Wealth , Victory

“Is it not true that our brotherhood transcends distances, different languages, and the absence of close cultural links, and unites us in the struggle? Ought not a Japanese worker be closer to an Argentine laborer, a Bolivian miner, a man working for United Fruit Company or a Cuban cane cutter, than to a Japanese samurai?”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Promoting proletarian internationalism in a September 1959 article published in the Mexican review Humanismo, as quoted in The Marxism of Che Guevara (1973), by Michael Löwy, p. 108

“Many hon. Members, I know, have studied the relevant documents which have been issued about German activities immediately after the last war. They show—I do not think anybody can doubt it—a devastating indictment of the complete absence of German sincerity from the very beginning in fulfilling any of the disarmament stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles. I believe it to be a fact that over the whole range of the disarmament stipulations of that Treaty the German military authorities practised ingenious, universal, and, let us admit it, to a certain extent successful evasion and obstruction at all possible points.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1944/sep/29/war-and-international-situation#column_698 in the House of Commons (29 September 1944)

Study , Success , War , Universe

“Fascism is anti-Marxism which seeks to destroy the enemy by the evolvement of a radically opposed and yet related ideology and by the use of almost identical and yet typically modified methods, always, however within the unyielding framework of national self-assertion and autonomy. This definition implies that without Marxism there is no fascism, that fascism is at the same time closer to and further from communism than is liberal anti-communism, that it necessarily shows at least an inclination toward a radical ideology, that fascism should never be said to exist in the absence of at least the rudiments of an organization and propaganda comparable to those of Marxism.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), pp. 20–21

Self-confidence , Time , Relation ships , Communication

“It is true that God is necessity, or, as we may also put it, that he is the absolute Thing: he is however no less the absolute Person. That he is the absolute Person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached: and on that side it falls short of the true notion of God which forms the content of religious consciousness in Christianity. Spinoza was by descent a Jew; and it is upon the whole the Oriental way of seeing things, according to which the nature of the finite world seems frail and transient, that has found its intellectual expression in his system. This Oriental view of the unity of substance certainly gives the basis for all real further development. Still it is not the final idea. It is marked by the absence of the principle of the Western world, the principle of individuality, which first appeared under a philosophic shape, contemporaneously with Spinoza, in the Monadology of Leibnitz.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences: The Logic
G - L, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

God , Personality , Nature , Way

“P. Bernays has pointed out on several occasions that, since the consistency of a system cannot be proved using means of proof weaker than those of the system itself, it is necessary to go beyond the framework of what is, in Hilbert’s sense, finitary mathematics if one wants to prove the consistency of classical mathematics, or even that of classical number theory. Consequently, since finitary mathematics is defined as the mathematics in which evidence rests on what is intuitive, certain abstract notions are required for the proof of the consistency of number theory…. In the absence of a precise notion of what it means to be evident, either in the intuitive or in the abstract realm, we have no strict proof of Bernays’ assertion; practically speaking, however, there can be no doubt that it is correct…”

Paul Bernays (1888–1977) Swiss mathematician

Kurt Gödel (1958, CW II, p. 241) as cited in: Feferman, Solomon. " Lieber Herr Bernays!, Lieber Herr Gödel! Gödel on finitism, constructivity and Hilbert's program* http://math.stanford.edu/~feferman/papers/bernays.pdf." dialectica 62.2 (2008): 179-203.

Sense , Mathematics

“The absence of Shero, a pioneer who studied systems in the Soviet Union well before it became vogue and was the first to add an assistant coach to his staff and behind the bench, must be the result of a vendetta. There is no other way to explain it.”

Fred Shero (1925–1990) Former ice hockey player and coach

Larry Brooks on Shero's absence from the Hockey Hall of Fame
SHERO, BURNS WORTHY OF INDUCTION, Brooks, Larry, New York Post, 2009-04-05, 2009-04-29 http://www.nypost.com/seven/04052009/sports/devils/shero__burns_worthy_of_induction_162898.htm?page=0,

Way , Study

“Prem Rawat speaks of a peace that is more than the absence of war. A peace that institutions cannot bring. A peace that needs to be established by each individual. To establish peace on the outside, he says, peace needs to be established first on the inside. He brings a remarkable message of hope, and I look forward to hearing him tonight. Please join me in welcoming to the stage a truly wonderful, international, inspirational man, Prem Rawat.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

About, 2000s

War , Peace , Hope

“If I stopped at this point, I would be merely stating a fact, and not telling the truth. You see, a fact is merely the absence of contradiction, but truth is the presence of coherence. Truth is the relatedness of facts. Now it is a fact that we’ve come a long, long way, but it isn’t the whole truth. In order to tell the truth, it would be necessary to add the other part, and I’m afraid that if I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stopped here, I would leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficialities. So in order to tell the truth, it is necessary to move on and not only say that we’ve come a long, long way, but that we’ve a long, long way to go before the American dream is a reality, before this problem is solved.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Optimism , Dreams , Truth , Problem

“Absence and presence have very primal effects upon us. Too much presence suffocates; a degree of absence spurs our interest. We are marked by the continual desire to possess what we do not have—the object projected by our fantasies. Learn to create some mystery around you, to use strategic absence to make people desire your return, to want to possess you. Dangle in front of others what they are missing most in life, what they are forbidden to have, and they will go crazy with desire. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Overcome this weakness in yourself by embracing your circumstances, your fate.”

Robert Greene (1959) American author

Chap. 5 : Become an Elusive Object of Desire
The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

Fate , Grass , People , Learning

“Your emotions are a translation, informing you at all moments of the day of where you stand energetically in relation to your higher self. When you are preventing the focused energy of your higher self, you quickly develop ailments of all kinds. When you create a lack of that energy flowing through you, you make yourself a match to illness, to accidents, and to absence instead of abundance and health.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Self-confidence , Making love , Health , Relation ships

“I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)

https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/34/mode/1up p. 34

Personality , People , Age , Housing

“America must get to work. In the chilled climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing winds. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that buried its head in the sand waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education, or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and timeless absence of moral leadership. We must dissent, because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Speech delivered on September 6, 1990, before the Annual Judicial Conference of the Second Circuit, quoted in Supreme Justice Speeches and Writings Thurgood Marshall. Edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr. (2002).

Waiting , Indifference , Hope , Education

“The absence of hatred in no way implies the absence of moral indignation.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

January 1943, p. 590
Etty: The Letters and Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943

Way

“Pride is not a wise counselor. People who believe themselves to be the incarnation of good have a distorted view of the world. The absence of any obstacle to the deployment of strength is dangerous for the strong themselves: passion takes precedence over reason. "No power without limit can be legitimate," as Montesquieu wrote long ago. Political wisdom does not consist in seeking only immediate victory, nor does it require systematic preference of "us" over "them."”

Tzvetan Todorov (1939–2017) Bulgarian historian, philosopher, structuralist literary critic, sociologist and essayist

Preface to the English edition (October 2002), p. xxi
Hope and Memory: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (2003)

Strong , Victory , People , World

“While not a panacea, candidly recognizing the absence of any good logical arguments for God’s existence, giving up on divine allies and advocates as well as taskmasters and tormentors, and prizing a humane, reasonable, and brave outlook just might help move this world a bit closer to a heaven on earth.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Part 3 “Four Psycho-Mathematical Arguments”, Chapter 6 “Atheists, Agnostics, and “Brights”” (p. 149)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)

World , God , Help

“These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 2
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Soul , Heart , Pleasure , Joy

“If I should be, where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence, wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; And that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came,
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love, oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Now wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves, and for thy sake.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Past , Forgetting , Nature , Love

“This is material that is quite formidable, that is infecting people with inhalation anthrax, infecting them in the absence of direct contact. You can call it whatever you want to call it with regard to grade and size or weaponized or not weaponized. The fact is, it is acting like a highly efficient bioterrorist agent.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Response to a 2001 anthrax attack, reported in Denise Grady, "Not his first epidemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci sticks to the facts", The New York Times (March 15, 2020).

People

“If I solve my dispute with my neighbor by killing him, I have certainly solved the immediate dispute. If my neighbor was a scoundrel, then the world is no doubt better for his absence. But in killing my neighbor, though he may have been a terrible man who did not deserve to live, I have made myself a killer — and the life of my next neighbor is in greater peril than the life of the last. In making myself a killer I have destroyed the possibility of neighborhood.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Statement against the War in Vietnam"
The Long-Legged House (1969)

World , Life , Making love

“It was the sort of atmosphere of good humor which so often accompanies a total absence of good taste.”

Robert Sheckley book Victim Prime

Source: Victim Prime (1987), Chapter 48 (pp. 187-188)

“According to an old rule of psychic contagion: that absence of clarity or outright confusion in one, just one specific, local matter will end by infecting the whole of one's judgment.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Death Kit (1967), p.160

“Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and subjects or with their women. And when he is obliged to take the life of any one, to do so when there is a proper justification and manifest reason for it; but above all he must abstain from taking the property of others, for men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony. Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 17; translated by Luigi Ricci

Loss , Fear , Death , Forgetting

“The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (October 31, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021.
1950s

Peace , Justice , Law , War

“Party has no doubt its evils; but all the evils of party put together would be scarcely a grain in the balance, when compared to the dissolution of honourable friendships, the pursuit of selfish ends, the want of concert in council, the absence of a settled policy in foreign affairs, the corruption of separate statesmen, the caprices of an intriguing Court, which the extinction of party connection has brought and would again bring upon this country.”

John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (1792–1878) leading Whig and Liberal politician who served as Prime Minister on two occasions

From the introduction to Correspondence of John, Fourth Duke of Bedford, Vol. 3 (1847), p. lxii
1840s

Selfishness , Friendship , Evil , Country

“We are living in a moment in which our physicality, our being there is replaced by our virtual images and our voice, even this impalpable. Our being flesh and blood has to deal with the absence that is the true presence in these times”

Salvatore Garau (1953) Italian artist

referring to his 'I Am', The invisible sculpture, Garau make in 2021 during Covid19 era
Quote of Garau, in https://it.finance.yahoo.com/notizie/venduta-scultura-che-non-esiste-110928142.html 'Venduta scultura che non esiste: Salvatore Garau e l’immateriale' 2021, Yahoo Finance, May 2021

Time

“Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Friendship , Love

“Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgement of others.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but simply moving on with dignity despite that fear.”

Pat Riley (1945) American basketball player, coach, executive

Courage , Fear , Moving On

“Solitude is not the absence of Love, but its complement.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Solitude

Solitude , Love

“And sometimes when you're on
You're really fucking on
And your friends they sing along
And they love you
But the lows are so extreme
That the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence”

Jenny Lewis (1976) American actor, singer-songwriter

A Better Son/Daughter
Song lyrics, The Execution of All Things (2003)

Singing , Love

“And sometimes when you're on
You're really fucking on
And your friends they sing along
And they love you
But the lows are so extreme
That the good seems fucking cheap
And it teases you for weeks in its absence”

Jenny Lewis (1976) American actor, singer-songwriter

A Better Son/Daughter
Song lyrics, The Execution of All Things (2003)

Singing , Love

“I am for the state only doing what people are unable to do in the absence of government action.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Text of television interview with Mike Wallace, New York, New York, October 17 and 18, 1960, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 322
1950s, Television interview with Mike Wallace (1960)

People

“The absence of one we love is not solitude, it is severance.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

L’assenza di chi si ama non è solitudine è ablazione.

Solitude , Love

“The first child is also loved, when he is still the only child and there is the absence of someone who can take his place.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love

“Without fear of God as a basis, nothing is possible spiritually, for the absence of fear is a lack of self-knowledge.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 30, 978-1-93659700-0]
God, Reverential fear and love

God , Knowledge , Fear

“Prediction is not the same thing as understanding, but in the absence of prediction, we can certainly doubt understanding.”

Robyn Dawes (1936–2010) American psychologist

Source: Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001), Chapter 6, “Three Specific Irrationalities of Probabilistic Judgment” (p. 97)

Understanding

“So true - when people see an absence of women in engineering, science and technology, then it becomes self-reinforcing.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/
On Gender

People , Women , Science

“Our actions whether good or evil have an ultimate significance and have effects of infinite range and scope. We stand under incalculable responsibility. We must be faithful in little things because there are no little things; we must be faithful in God’s absence because God is never absent.”

Arulselvam Rayappan (1960) Indian prelate

Source: Responsible Servants https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/responsible-servants-arulselvam-rayappan-sermon-on-parable-general-77029 (7 March 2005)

God , Evil , Faith

“In the absence of more consumers, capital finds ways to get existing consumers to consume more. Indeed, the dominant story for the past few hundred years: the growth rate of material use has always significantly outstripped the growth rate of the population.”

Jason Hickel (1982) author

Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2021)
Source: Rise of the Juggernaut, pp. 111-112

Past , Way