Quotes about existence

A collection of quotes on the topic of existence, world, other, doing.

Aristotle quote: “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

Oscar Wilde quote: “Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

Quotes about existence

“The closest thing to purgatory is a government agency, only the first does not exist and the second is very real.”

José Baroja book Sueño en Guadalajara y otros cuentos

“Already in his old age, at seventy-five years old, after being seriously hospitalized for a severe heart attack, Javier Pérez would remember that only once in his entire existence had he believed he understood what life was.”

José Baroja book Sueño en Guadalajara y otros cuentos

Life, Heart, Age

“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful. There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry about what they will think of you because they love you for who you are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note, song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conversation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby. Things that never interested you before become fascinating because you know they are important to this person who is so special to you. You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do. Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

love, Love, Life, People

“The goal of the education reform is to realize the potential of Thai people to develop themselves for a better quality of life and to develop the national into peaceful co-existence in the global community.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jcrdaen/1/1/1_KJ00006742072/_pdf
Education for Peace

Life, People, Education, Peace

“The Barbican - an element of medieval fortifications; a circular defensive structure with loop-holes, in front of the town walls. In Europe this kind of building has been preserved only at Carcassonne (southern France), Zgorzelec (Görlitz), and of course in Cracow. (…) It was at that time, that one of the largest European buildings of this kind came to to exist in Cracow, being nowadays the best preserved example of the medieval barbican.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

The Barbican (Barbakan), "Kraków" Magazyn Kulturalny, Special Edition, 1991, p. 58-59. http://pbn.nauka.gov.pl/sedno-webapp/works/509488

Time

“For several years we have witnessed climatic irregularities that prompt fear and anxiety about the conditions of our future existence. However, the climatic anomalies occurred also in the past when the blame for environmental destruction could hardly be put on humans.”

Marek Żukow-Karczewski (1961) Polish historian, journalist and opinion journalist

Weather anomalies in Poland's past, "Aura" 7, 1990-07, p. 6-8. http://yadda.icm.edu.pl/yadda/element/bwmeta1.element.agro-545c16f1-b48e-46e2-a0d2-6a4babeeeea0?q=89e2d267-8e35-4c74-b570-25a195714d27$8&qt=IN_PAGE

Fear, Past, Future

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916, part 2, p. 1.
Also included in Jack London’s Tales of Adventure, ed. Irving Shepard, Introduction, p. vii (1956)

Time, Wise

“My brain is only a receiver. In the universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength, inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Secret, Knowledge, Universe

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

Variant: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." also mentioned as Jack London quote in Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 21 : Orbit
Source: San Francisco Bulletin in 1916. Also included as an introduction to a compilation of Jack London short stories in 1956.

For Men, Time

“Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow.”

Ed Warren (1926–2006) American paranormal investigator, demonologist, exorcist, ghost hunter

God, People

“We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Change, Time

“Obstacles do not exist to be surrendered to, but only to be broken.”

Adolf Hitler book Mein Kampf

Source: Mein Kampf

“I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me. Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man.”

Janusz Korczak (1878–1942) Polish physician and writer

Source: Warsaw Ghetto Memoirs of Janusz Korczak

Love, World

“To exist is not a choice, but a gift. Living to your full potential is a personal choice you must make after finding your true Self.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Personality

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Study, Science

“What nearly everybody in my life had misunderstood about Satanism was that it is not about ritual sacrifices, digging up graves and worshipping the devil. The devil doesn't exist. Satanism is about worshipping yourself, because you are responsible for your own good and evil.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Life, Evil

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Soul of Man under Socialism

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Deep, Life, Heart Touching, People

“I don’t need to prove the worthiness of my existence to some fuckin’ cunts wearing the coolest gear at the moment. ”

Ville Valo (1976) Finnish rock musician

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Life, God, People, History

“Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?
O'Brien: Of course he exists.
Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?
O'Brien: You do not exist.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd: the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world's existence. All these half-tones of the soul's consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Os sentimentos que mais doem, as emoções que mais pungem, são os que são absurdos – a ânsia de coisas impossíveis, precisamente porque são impossíveis, a saudade do que nunca houve, o desejo do que poderia ter sido, a mágoa de não ser outro, a insatisfação da existência do mundo. Todos estes meios tons da consciencia da alma criam em nós uma paisagem dolorida, um eterno sol-pôr do que somos.
The Book of Disquietude, trans. Richard Zenith, text 196

World, Feeling, Soul, Nostalgia

“I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.”

Osamu Dazai book The Setting Sun

Source: The Setting Sun

Life

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) French philosopher

Powerful, Change

“The branch might seem like the fruit's origin:
In fact, the branch exist because of the fruit.”

Rumi Masnavi

Mathnawi
Teachings of Rumi (1999)

“As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”

Protagoras (-486–-411 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Opening lines of Concerning the Gods (DK 80 B4).
Variant translation: "As to the Gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist, or if they do, what they are like."

Life, God

“People who allow others not of their race to live among them will perish, because the inevitable result of a racial integration is racial inter-breeding which destroys the characteristics and existence of a race. Forced integration is deliberate and malicious genocide, particularly for a People like the White race, who are now a small minority in the world.”

David Lane (white nationalist) book 88 Precepts

page ?
88 Precepts

People, World

“Like it or not, your existence is grounded in faith.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Faith

“Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist?”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, p. 223; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote.
Disputed
Context: Isn't it bewildering … that everything is so beautiful, despite all the horrors that exist? Lately I've noticed something grand and mysterious peering into my sheer joy in all that is lovely — the sense of a Creator whom innocent creation worships with its beauty. Only man can be hateful or ugly, because he possesses a free will to cut himself off from the chorus of praise. It often seems that he will succeed in drowning out this chorus with his cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy. But it has become clear to me this spring that he cannot. And so I must try to throw myself on the side of the victor.

Beauty

“I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't. ”

Jules Renard (1864–1910) French author (1864-1910)

God

“There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Source: Pleasures of a Nonconformist

Love, Life, Happiness

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Wise, Happy, Life, Happiness

“Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer

People

“Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.”

Annie Ernaux (1940) French writer

Source: Quoted in Melodrama after the tears, ed. Jörg Metelmann and Scott Loren (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), p. 178

Life, People, Intelligence, Universe

“There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is blink.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Variant: The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

Life, World, Loneliness

“I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Faith, Dreams

“Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Life

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

World, Art, Perfection

“How many people you know who can name every serial killer who ever existed in a row?”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

2000s, Relapse (2009)

People

“Consciousness expresses itself through creation. This world we live in is the dance of the Creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye but the dance lives on. On many an occasion when I am dancing, I have felt touched by something sacred. In those moments, I felt my spirit soar and become one with everything that exists. I become the stars and the moon. I become the lover and the beloved. I become the victor and the vanquished. I become the master and the slave. I become the singer and the song. I become the knower and the known. I keep on dancing and then, it is the eternal dance of creation. The Creator and the creation merge into one wholeness of joy. I keep on dancing — until there is only … the dance.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

"The Dance" - from inlay sleeve of Dangerous (1991)

World, Star, Lovers, Joy

“When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

The Last Messiah [Den sidste Messias] (1933)

Life, Death, Nature, Suicide

“As long as we have God and the devil in the scriptures, competitions will never cease to exist.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God

“Midlife is the time to let go of an overdominant ego and to contemplate the deeper significance of human existence.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Time

“The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Life, Death, Question, Problem

“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Way

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Reality

“Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Love, Music, Star, Silence

“The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Truth, World, Art

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.”

Esther Perel (1958) Belgian Psychotherapist and Author

Source: Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

Love

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i. e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i. e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Part 3, Ch. 13, § 3. Source: On the subject the ideal subjects for a totalitarian authority. Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951. As quoted by Scroll Staff (December 04, 2017): Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today’s political times https://web.archive.org/web/20191001213756/https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times. In: Scroll.in. Archived from the original https://scroll.in/article/856549/ten-things-hannah-arendt-said-that-are-eerily-relevant-in-todays-political-times on October 1, 2019.

People, Reality, Falseness

“The imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Imagination

“A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947) - Full text online http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lear/english/e_ltf]

“If, I say now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods… then I would be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. …this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology

Death, Wisdom, Men, God

“The reason why China suffers bitterly from endless wars is because of the existence of feudal lords and kings. A reliance on ancestral temples initially brought stability, but the revival of states results in the spread of soldiers. Doing so will never bring about stability!”

Qin Shi Huang (-258–-210 BC) founding emperor of the Qin Dynasty

Records of the Grand Historian, by Sima Qian

War, Suffering

“We have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in the future.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics (1931)

Law, Future

“Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason!”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Context: There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.

Feeling

“In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916) Context: In love all the contradictions of existence merge themselves and are lost. Only in love are unity and duality not at variance. Love must be one and two at the same time. Only love is motion and rest in one. Our heart ever changes its place till it finds love, and then it has its rest. But this rest itself is an intense form of activity where utter quiescence and unceasing energy meet at the same point in love. In love, loss and gain are harmonised. In its balance-sheet, credit and debit accounts are in the same column, and gifts are added to gains. In this wonderful festival of creation, this great ceremony of self-sacrifice of God, the lover constantly gives himself up to gain himself in love. Indeed, love is what brings together and inseparably connects both the act of abandoning and that of receiving.

Love

“And before the stars were born.
The greatest gift you can offer anyone is their complete freedom.
Freedom to love, to laugh, to cry, to feel scared, angry, insecure, full of doubt or full of joy.
To hold them in that safe and sacred space.
You don't exist to make anyone else happy.
But you can be present.
Present to their unhappiness, their excitement.
Present to the life that moves in them.
And you can invite them to a deeper Happiness.
The Happiness of Being itself.
The Happiness that holds them exactly as they are.
The way you hold them now.
The way the ground holds the flowers, the trees, the great mountain ranges.
The way you were held as a little one.
And before the stars were born.”

Джефф Фостер (1977) American basketball player

Love, Life, Way, Feeling

“A man who prays lives out the mystery of existence, and a man who does not pray scarcely exists.”

Charbel Makhlouf (1828–1898) Lebanese Maronite monk and saint

Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel (2019)

“Words are life. Words are light. Words are power. Words are energy. Words are truth. Words can enliven and words can also kill. Words can give hope, or plunge us into despair. People use words to build peace, and use words to make war. Words can create walls between cultures, religions, and nations. And words can also build bridges. The existence of an individual, a family, a community, a country, and our planet is being led to good or to evil through the power of the words we speak. The words we speak are responsible for everything that happens in this world. We, therefore, must be responsible for the words we speak. On behalf of future generations, I hope that each of us will do all we can to speak only bright, light-filled words, so that one day, our descendants will be born into a world filled with light. There is no time to lose. Starting at this very moment, I hope all of us will take a close look at the words we have been using and make constant efforts to fill them with brightness.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Despair, Family, Peace, Religion

“We must preserve the sense of unity and the sense of diversity and multiplicity. We must recognize that the One and the Many are the same thing viewed from different angles. The One is the Many. The One is manifested only in and through the Many. It has no separate existence apart from the Many. Equally the Many are the One. Even during their temporary separation, they are always part of the One, and always united with the One. Every one of us is always part of the One, and can unite with the One at any time we choose”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2

Sense, Time, Parting

“Time is the architect of fate,
fleeting omen, pure phantom
in enchanting light of absence,
and our life the play of love and death,
only love will never die,
because In love no longer ‘thou’ and ‘I’ exist,
only the blossom of sacred unity.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://hellopoetry.com/alexis-karpouzos/

Time, Death, Fate, Light

“We start growing whenever we become aware of our existence and surroundings.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Call on Me…
Call on Me..
Call on Me.

I am the Lover you dreamt about in your Angel filled Dreams.

I have sat awaiting your love for an eternity.

Please do not shun Me for I shall die.

My entire existance is the pure essence of You, My dear.

How you have entrapped Me like a Siren.

If I had known what I know now..

If only I had known what I know now.

I do not wish to exhibit My Undying Love for You, My dear.

However it is completely Transparent.

Awaken

and see me.

I am your Destiny.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Lovers, Dreams, Angels, Love

“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Relationship, Romantic, Love, Problem

“What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 217

Love, Understanding

“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

World, Universe

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Success, Children, Teachers, Success

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Happy, Happiness

“You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Source: Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends

Way

“Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived, or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

"Security" (1951); excerpted in Outlaw Journalist: The Life & Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008), page 15
1950s

Happy, Powerful, Life

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Madness

“The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

For Men, God, Faith

“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Life, World, Falseness

“Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once…and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”

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

Source: At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

Time

“To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.”

Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) American and French sculptor

World, Silence

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Relationship

“People who say that yesterday was better than today are ultimately devaluing their own existence.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

People

“In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Love, War, World, Peace

“In terms of experience, we want to make this (referring to the self) very pleasant. We want this to be blissful, ecstatic. But, as I said before, even being ecstatic is not goal by itself. If you are blissful by your own nature, then the important thing is that you are no more the issue. There are other issues in this existence; we can look at those. But if you are an issue, what other issue will you take in your hands? You will not touch anything. When I am enough trouble myself, why do I want to take on this one or that one? When I am no more an issue, now I am willing to dig into the whole existence and see what it is all about.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

Nature

“Live in the present, remember the past, and fear not the future, for it doesn't exist and never shall. There is only now.”

Christopher Paolini book Eldest

Saphira
Source: Eldest (2005)

Fear, Past, Future

“Love… no such thing.

Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist.

Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that’s certain.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

Love, Stupidity, Fear, Family

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Fear

“He realized that all his life he had been a nobody to everyone. What he now felt was the fear of his own oblivion. It was as though he did not exist.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Life, Fear

“Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.”

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

Art, Communication

“Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful…. We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

Life, World, Beauty, Reality

“Revolutions are not push button affairs; rather, they evolve only if there exists a reservoir of hope and grievance that can be galvanized into popular action.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

1 POLITICS AND ISSUES, Making The World Safe For Hypocrisy, p. 64
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

Hope

“Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”

Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821) Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat

The Count, in Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, "Second Dialogue," (1821).

“Mary is the great mother. She is the mother. That's what Mary is. Whether she existed or not, is not the point. She exists at least as a hyper-reality. She exists as the mother. What's the sacrifice of the mother? That's easy: if you're a mother who's worth her salt, you offer your son to be destroyed by the world. That's what you do. And that's what's going to happen. He's going to be born, he's going to suffer, he's going to have his trouble in life, he's going to have his illnesses, he's going to face his failures and catastrophes, and he's going to die. That's what's going to happen, and if you're awake you know that, and then you say, 'well, perhaps he will live in a way that will justify that.' And then you try to have that happen. And that's what makes you worthy of a statue like [The Pieta]. 'Is it right to bring a baby into this terrible world?' Well, every woman asks herself that question. Some say no, and they have their reasons. Mary answers 'yes' voluntarily. Mary is the archetype of the woman who answers yes to life voluntarily. Not because she is blind. She knows what's going to happen. So, she's the archetypal representation of the woman who says yes to life knowing full well what life is. She's not naive. She's not someone who got pregnant in the backseat of a 1957 Chevy during one night of half-drunk idiocy. Not that. She does so consciously. Consciously, knowing what's to come. And then she allows it to happen, which is a testament to mothers.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Bible Series V: Cain and Abel: The Hostile Brothers
Concepts

Life, World, Way, Failure

“The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 11, p. 179

Help

“Union busting has become a major industry with more than a thousand consulting firms teaching companies how to prevent workers from organizing and how to get rid of existing unions.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Giving Labor The Business, p. 122
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“To me there are two Hitlers: one who existed until the end of the French war; the other begins with the Russian campaign. In the beginning he was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people. The important thing to remember is that the first Hitler, the man who I knew until the end of the French war, had much charm and goodwill. He was always frank. The second Hitler, who existed from the beginning of the Russian campaign until his suicide, was always suspicious, easily upset, and tense. He was distrustful to an extreme degree.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

War, People, Suicide

“I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

As quoted in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) by Dale Carnegie, p. 26

Life, People, Pleasure, Time

“Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.”

Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher

Or, comme il y a une infinité d'univers possibles dans les idées de Dieu, et qu'il n'en peut exister qu'un seul, il faut qu'il y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le détermine à l'un plutôt qu'à l'autre. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrés de perfection que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prétendre à l'existence à mesure de la perfection qu'il enveloppe.
La monadologie (53 & 54).
The Monadology (1714)

God, World, Idea, Universe

“Not official revolutionary commissars in any sort of sashes, but rather revolutionary propagandists are to be dispatched into all the provinces and communes and particularly among the peasants who cannot be revolutionised by principles, nor by the decrees of any dictatorship, but only by the act of revolution itself, that is to say, by the consequences that will inevitably ensure in every commune from complete cessation of the legal and official existence of the state.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Program and Object of the Secret Revolutionary Organisation of the International Brotherhood (1868)

Communication

“In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

"The 1% Pathology And The Myth of Capitalism" October 19, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyX7GNHYkQ&t=218

“… And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., number 168
The Book of Disquiet

Life, Death, Hate, Fear

“This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other… This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

As quoted in Karl Marx: A Life, by Francis Wheen, London: UK, Fourth Estate (1999) p. 340.

People, World, Communication, Strong

“If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth edition, (1876) Vol. III, "Biology", p. 689.
Also quoted in Joseph Cook (1878), Biology, with Preludes on Current Events, Houghton, Osgood, p. 39
1870s

Life, Time

“The greatest, strongest, mightiest plea for the church of God in the world is the existence of the Spirit of God in its midst, and the works of the Spirit of God are the true evidences of Christianity. They say miracles are withdrawn, but the Holy Spirit is the standing miracle of the church of God to-day.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 137.

God, World

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max&#8209; Planck&#8209; Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

Life, Intelligence, Study, Science