Quotes about existence
page 33

“A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor, no economic reason for chiseling workers' wages or stretching workers' hours.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Message to Congress on establishing minimum wages and maximum hours (1937)

Democracy, Support

“The tradition in Hinduism is that it is not open to any Hindu, whatever be the name and mental image of the Supreme Being he uses for his devotional exercises, to deny the existence of God that others worship. He can raise the name of his choice to that of the highest, but he can not deny the divinity or the truth of the God of other denominations. The fervor of his own piety just gives predominance to the name and form he gives for his own worship and contemplation, and he treats the other gods as deriving the divinity therefrom. This reduces all controversy to a devotional technique of concentration on a peculiar name and mental form or concrete symbol as representing the supreme being. It makes no difference in the contents of Vedanta to which all devotees equally subscribe… ‘just as all water raining from the skies goes to the ocean, worship of all gods go to Keshava.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

C. Rajagopalachari (1900) Hinduism, doctrine and way of life https://archive.org/stream/cu31924091600688#page/n37/mode/2up, p. 31; As quoted in [Rao, K.L. Seshagiri, Mahatma Gandhi And Comparative Religion, http://books.google.com/books?id=HSGWZ9mpNl4C&pg=PA110, 1 January 1990, Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 978-81-208-0767-9, 110–]

God, Truth, Exercises, Water

“There is another responsibility of the states. It is quite aside from this one of jurisdiction. It is the subject of law enforcement. We are not a lawless people, but we are too frequently a careless one. The multiplicity of laws, the varied possibilities of appeals, the disposition to technicality in procedure, the delays and consequent expense of litigation which inevitably inure to the advantage of wealth and specialized ability — all these have many times been recounted as reproaches to us. It is strange that such laxities should persist in a time like the present, which is marked by a determined upward movement in behalf of the social welfare. But they do exist. They demonstrate a need for better, prompter, less irksome, and expensive administration of the laws. They point the necessity for simplification and codification of laws; for uniformity of procedure; for more accurate delimitation of State and Federal authority.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

People, Law, Time, Wealth

“Atheism exists only in coldness, selfishness, and baseness.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël book Corinne

Bk. 10, ch. 5
Corinne (1807)

Selfishness

“Man’s tragic apostasy from God is not something which happened once for all, a long time ago. It is true in every moment of existence.... It involves no scientific description of absolute beginnings. Eden is on no map, and Adam’s fall fits no historical calendar. Moses is not nearer to the Fall than we are, because he lived three thousand years before our time. The Fall refers not to some datable, aboriginal calamity in the historical past of humanity, but to a dimension of human experience which is always present—namely, that we who have been created for fellowship with God repudiate it continually; and that the whole of mankind does this along with us. Every man is his own ‘Adam,’ and all men are solidarily ‘Adam.’ Thus, Paradise before the Fall, the status perfectionis, is not a period of history, but our ‘memory’ of a divinely intended quality of life, given to us along with our consciousness of guilt.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.237 (John S. Whale: Christian Doctrine. 1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 52)

Life, Men, God, History

“However much the theory of political realism may have been misunderstood and misinterpreted, there is no gainsaying its distinctive intellectual and moral attitude to matters political.
Intellectually, the political realist maintains the autonomy of the political sphere, as the economist, the lawyer, the moralist maintain theirs. He thinks in terms of interest defined as power, as the economist thinks in terms of interest defined as wealth; the lawyer, of the conformity of action with legal rules; the moralist, of the conformity of action with moral principles. The economist asks: "How does this policy affect the wealth of society, or a segment of it?" The lawyer asks: "Is this policy in accord with the rules of law?" The moralist asks: "Is this policy in accord with moral principles?" And the political realist asks: "How does this policy affect the power of the nation?" (Or of the federal government, of Congress, of the party, of agriculture, as the case may be.)
The political realist is not unaware of the existence and relevance of standards of thought other than political ones. As political realist, he cannot but subordinate these other standards to those of politics.”

Hans Morgenthau book Politics Among Nations

Six Principles of Political Realism, § 6.
Politics Among Nations (1948)

Law, Thinking, Wealth

“The mirror by the door was not a mirror by the door, it was an altar where he stood for only a moment to put on his cap before going out. The red rocking chair was a rocking of his own hips as he sat in the kitchen. Still, there was nothing of his — his own — that she could find. It was as if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Sula (1973)

Color, Sense, Light

“The philosophy which underlines my work is based on change, continuity and the search for measures in natural order. The value of a sculpture relies on its own existence through time, independent of its creator and should usually speak for itself. It should beckon you to walk into its space, to travel its surface and edge, to sense, to touch, to peer into and ponder. As you leave it should invite you to return another time so that it can communicate further.”

Fred Conlon (1943–2005) Irish sculptor

citation needed
Attributed

Travel, Search, Communication, Nature

“The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas.
XXIX: "Le Joueur généreux"; The devil describes having heard this statement made by a Parisian preacher
Paraphrased in The Usual Suspects as "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

“Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

Death

“Over and over, when I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, "You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet."”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution (2006), p. 65

God, World, Feeling

“… life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; … it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.”

Alan Alda (1936) actor and United States Army officer

from Alan Alda's graduation speech, 1980 http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0020-alda1.htm.

Life

“Boyle entertains the hypothesis of a universal matter, the concept of atoms of different shapes and sizes, and the possibility of existence of substances that might properly be called elements… The atomic theory as originally conceived by Democritus and Epicurus, developed by Lucretius, and resurrected by Gassendi from about 1647 on, was doubtless the source from which Boyle derived his ideas, …as he cites both Epicurus and Gassendi. Boyle, however… avoids any dogmatic assertion of these hypotheses. It is plain, however, that these atoms or "corpuscles" as he calls them are a constant element of his thought.”

John Maxson Stillman (1852–1923) American chemist

John Maxson Stillman, The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry (1924)

Idea, Universe

“Year-end financial statements … express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable—yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating—than an evolutionary biologist’s proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), pp. 259-260.

Life, Truth

“In fact, it is only through the New Testament that we can learn just what Christian faith is. … Open your Bible at any page you like, there is nothing about solving religious problems. Bible testifies that God exists and that he revealed himself through Jesus Christ. It shows too that the man who lives without God is not living right.”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Is there any certainty in religious matters? 2.The Bible gives us wonderful certainties. p. 166
Jesus Our Destiny

God, Faith, Problem, Learning

“Many modifications in private and public life took place. Privacy ceasing to exist, all new houses were glass-built, curtains abolished, walls pulled down. Police went, the entire legal structure vanished overnight — a man does not litigate against himself. A parody of Parliament remained, to deal with foreign affairs, but party politics, elections, leaders in newspapers (even newspapers themselves) were scrapped.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Life, Housing

“No mind, no form, I only exist; now ceased all will and thought; the final end of [Nature]]'s dance, I am it whom I have sought.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

"The Absolute", p. 1
My Flute (1972)

Nature, Dance

““I don’t know.” That was typical Sajaki; like all the genuinely clever people Sylveste had met he knew better than to feign understanding where none existed.”

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 18 (p. 357).

People, Understanding

“But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)

People, Books, World, Education

“But a class of structures fraught with much greater evils exist in great abundance throughout the country—namely, those in which the faults of an unscientific design have been so far counteracted by massive strength, good materials, and careful workmanship, that a temporary stability has been produced, but which contain within themselves sources of weakness, obvious to a scientific examination… that must inevitably cause their destruction within a limited number of years.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

p, 125
"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Evil, Country

“The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be given to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men's genius.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Humane Literacy".
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

Men

“Imagine the unimaginable… What would the world look like if America did not exist?”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Documentary films, America: Imagine the World Without Her (2014)

World, Imagination

“Inner experience, unable to have principles either in dogma (a moral attitude), or in science (knowledge can be neither its goal nor its origin), or in a search of enriching states (an experimental, aesthetic attitude), it cannot have any other concern nor other goal than itself. Opening myself to inner experience, I have placed in it all value and authority. Henceforth I can have no other value, no other authority (in the realm of mind). Value and authority imply the discipline of a method, the existence of a community.
I call experience a voyage to the end of the possible of man. Anyone may choose not to embark on this voyage, but if he does embark on it, this supposes the negation of the authorities, the existing values which limit the possible. By virtue of the fact that it is negation of other values, other authorities, experience, having a positive existence, becomes itself positively value and authority.
Inner experience has always had objectives other than itself in which one invested value and authority. … If God, knowledge, and suppression of pain were to cease to be in my eyes convincing objectives, … would inner experience from that moment seem empty to me, henceforth impossible without justification? …
I received the answer [from Blanchot]: experience itself is authority.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. 7

God, Pain, Search, Communication

“The meaning of my total existence involves knowing the possibilities of my future as well as my past, where I'm going as well as where I've been.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Past, Future

“Capitalism, in contrast, has existed for fewer than 300 years. If the entire history of Homo sapiens was a 24-hour day, then capitalism has existed for two minutes.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 1, Chapter 2, Capitalism, p. 33
Economics For Everyone (2008)

History

“The unalterable character with which Schopenhauer and sometimes Conrad believed all humans are born may not exist; but we cannot help looking within ourselves to account for what we do. All we find are fragments, like memories of a novel we once read.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Lord Jim's Jump (p. 68)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Memory, Reading, Help

“How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2005)

“I felt wonderfully wicked. I always do when I frustrate overly powerful, responsible-to-no-one types who think all existence was created only for their pleasure and exploitation.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 48, “The Shadowgate: The Warlords of the Air” (p. 530)

Pleasure, Thinking

“Conservatives — or better, pro-corporate apologists — hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity," and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right … This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove — the reputed brain of George W. Bush — as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

Speech to the "Take Back America" Conference (10 June 2003) http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~wjs/BillMoyersSpeech.htm; "Degenerate and unlovely age" is a quotation from Charles Eliot Norton

Age

“Each character is an allegory for every aspect of human existence.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

“It's often said of Jesus that he could have saved himself, but he chose not to. And if you read the Gospels it's clear that he could have talked himself out of that crucifixion quite easily, but he was just too stubborn. The Romans didn't really want to kill him at all, but in the end they went along with it because he was being such a prick about it. The truth is he couldn't wait to get up on that cross. In fact, I think Christianity only exists because Jesus Christ just happened to be a masochist. I think he took one look at the hammer and nails and he couldn't believe his luck. He thought, "Well, in three days I'll be in Heaven, but until then I'm going to enjoy myself."”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Happy Easter" (5 April 2007) https://youtube.com/watch?v=RCPwdfQyxe4 2007

Truth, Thinking, Waiting, Reading

“Edward Norman (then Dean of Peterhouse) had attempted to mount a Christian argument for nuclear weapons. The discussion moved on to 'Western values'. Mrs Thatcher said (in effect) that Norman had shown that the Bomb was necessary for the defence of our values. Powell: 'No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.' Thatcher (it was just before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands): ‘Nonsense, Enoch. If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values.' 'No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Mrs Thatcher looked utterly baffled. She had just been presented with the difference between Toryism and American Republicanism. John Casey, ' The revival of Tory philosophy http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/28511/the-revival-of-tory-philosophy/', The Spectator (17 March 2007) 1980s

Time, Fight, Country

“There is no foundational mathematical or physical reason the relationship between Pythagorean and tempered western music should exist. It just does. The rich flexibility of the tempered scale and the … bountiful archives of western music are a testimonial to this wonderful coincidence provided by nature.”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

"Handbook of Fourier Analysis and Its Applications" (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 623, Robert J. Marks II, 2009, 2011-04-29 http://books.google.com/books?id=Sp7O4bocjPAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Handbook+of+Fourier+Analysis+and+Its+Applications&hl=en&ei=wcm5TaPvJYba0QHYi7nRDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false,

Music, Mathematics, Nature

“Common to all these enemies is that none of them accepts the reality of the "whole system": we do not exist in such a system. Furthermore, in the case of morality, religion, and aesthetics, at least a part of our reality reality as human is not "in" any system, and yet it plays a central role in our lives.
To me these enemies provide a powerful way of learning about the systems approach, precisely because they enable the rational mind to step outside itself and to observe itself”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

from the vantage point of the enemies
Churchman had identified four generic enemies: politics, morality, religion, and aesthetics.
Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 24; Partly as cited in: Reynolds, Martin (2003). "Social and Ecological Responsibility: A Critical Systemic Perspective." In: Critical Management Studies Conference 'Critique and Inclusively: Opening the Agenda'; in the stream OR/Systems Thinking for Social Improvement, 7-9 July 2003, Lancaster University, UK.

Religion, Way, Reality, Learning

“Science in its amazing conquests, the mind in its almost infinite ways, have only limited, barred, and obstructed their search for a reality which doesn't exist, since everything is real and everything is unreal. What do I care if I fly like a sparrow or a finch if my mind remains that of the sparrow and the finch.”

Aldo Palazzeschi book Roma

Page 183, "1950"
Roma (1953)

Way, Search, Reality, Science

“All life is a struggle for existence. Why should it cease to be a struggle if it spreads among the stars?”

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 14 “The Extraordinary and Remarkable Ship” (p. 239)

Life, Star

“Two people may be at the same spot in manners and behaviour, and yet one may be getting better, and the other worse, which is the greatest of differences that could possibly exist between them.”

George MacDonald book The Princess and Curdie

The Princess and Curdie (1883)

People

“Since the universe is infinitely old, you should see some very old stars. According to the big bang theory the universe is only 13 billion years old. No stars should be older than 13 billion years. In our cosmology, stars older than this should exist. So we are on the lookout for very old stars. We made some observations [a year ago] which we are still trying to explain but the simplest explanation seems to be that there stars that are 20 billion years old.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

Star, Universe

“Land, n. A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy; and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognized. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Law, Parting

“Unborn eternity does not die; existence is dying and falls asleep in the eternity beyond existence.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Eternity and Existence,” p. 31
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Skywalking”

“…it depends indeed on whether the immigrants are different, and different in important respects from the existing population. Clearly, if they are identical, then no change for the good or bad can be brought about by the immigration. But if they are different, and to the extent that they are different, then numbers clearly are of the essence and this is not wholly – or mainly, necessarily – a matter of colour. For example, if the immigrants were Germans or Russians, their colour would be approximately the same as ours, but the problems which would be created and the change which could be brought about by a large introduction of a bloc of Germans or Russians into five areas in this country would be as serious – and in some respects more serious – than could follow from an introduction of a similar number of West Indians or Pakistanis.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Any Questions?, BBC Radio (29 November 1968), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 395
1960s

Problem, Change, Dependency, Country

“God exists…but only in our minds”

Siddharth Katragadda (1972) Indian writer

page 35
The Other Wife (2003)

God

“Leaders in all realms and activities of life knew that the power they had come to hold existed because they were responsible to serve the many, thus power was position of service.”

Vanna Bonta book Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel

Source: Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), Ch. 50

Life

“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, page 188.
Speech at the Labour Party Conference, 28 September 1976. This part of his speech was written by his son-in-law, future BBC Economics correspondent Peter Jay.
Prime Minister

War, Way, Thinking

“The words of malicious slander should not be allowed to enter the ear. A defensive voice should not be allowed to come out of the mouth. The want to gravely injure people should not be allowed to exist in the heart. If this is accomplished, though there be people who cynically expose others, they would be without people who would align with them.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

Book 1; Self-culfivation
Mozi

People, Heart

“What does an instinctively popular poet do in contemporary America, where serious poetry is no longer a popular art? The public whose values and sensibility he celebrates is unaware of his existence. Indeed, even if they were aware of his poetry, they would feel no need to approach it. Cut off from his proper audience, this poet feels little sympathy with the specialized minority readership that now sustains poetry either as a highly sophisticated verbal game or secular religion. His sensibility shows little similarity to theirs except for the common interest in poetry. And so the popular poet usually leads a marginal existence in literary life. His fellow poets look on him as an anomaly or an anachronism. Reviewers find him eminently unnewsworthy. Publishers see little prestige attached to printing his work. Critics, who have been trained to celebrate complexity, consider him an amiable simpleton.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Anonymity of the Regional Poet: Ted Kooser" http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ekooser.htm, from Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992) Essays

Life, Religion, Art, Feeling

“Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible. When reactionary forces crush us, we must move against these forces, even at the risk of death.”

Huey P. Newton book Revolutionary Suicide

Source: Revolutionary Suicide (1973), p. 3

Death, Hope, Suicide, Strong

“In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life.. . . Darwin never imagined the exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of life.”

Michael J. Behe (1952) American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate

Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)

Life, Imagination, Science

“Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Lying, Idea

“Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

The Robert Anton Wilson Website - RAW Thoughts, Robert Anton Wilson, 2016-06-03 http://www.rawilson.com/thoughts.html,

“His own infinity becomes zero in relation to that of the least fragment of the solid. He hardly exists at all. Trillions multiplies by trillions of trillions of such as he could not cross the frontier even of breadth, the idea which he came to guess at only because he felt himself bound by some mysterious power.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)

Idea

“I am filled with pride when I think of the noble and exalted world that must have existed before Christian doctrine caused men to look upon women with suspicion and bade them to think of angels instead.”

George Moore (novelist) (1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist

Apologia Pro Scriptis Meis. Memoirs of My Dead Life http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8mmdl10.txt (1906)

Women, Men, World, Angels

“Natural order was not invented by the human mind or set up by certain perceptive powers… The existence of order presupposes the existence of organizing intelligence. Such intelligence can be none other than God's.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Dieu existe? Oui http://books.google.com.mx/books/about/Dieu_existe_Oui.html?id=TBUCHQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y (1979). Paris. Stock. Christian Chabanis, p. 94. Original: L’ordre naturel n’est pas une invention de l’esprit humain et une mise en place de certaines propriétés d’observation... Qui dit ordre dit intelligence organisatrice. Cette intelligence ne peut être que celle de Dieu.

God, Intelligence, Nature

“The degree of our worthiness to become a free people shall be determined by our ability to respect a lawful leader, to agree to the existence of an opposition, to listen to its arguments, and especially to put the nation's good above all party prejudices and private interest. Liberty is not one of man's inalienable rights' it is a desirable but difficult acquisition, and must be contended for constantly.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

People, Law

“(Silence) denies the existence of HIV/AIDS, and prevents discussion of the human rights violations fuelling the pandemic, and constrains the mobilisation of resources and partnerships required to expand the prevention and care”

Epeli Ganilau (1951) Fijian politician

of HIV/AIDS
Address to the Pan Pacific HIV/AIDS Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, October 2005

Silence, Partnership

“Relativity and… quantum… remain incomplete…. the main reason each is incomplete is the existence of the other. The mind calls for a third theory to unify all of physics, and for a simple reason. Nature is… "unified." …interconnected, in that everything interacts with everything else.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (2007)

Nature

“A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

“He was referring, of course, to the gentleman employed by Henry Luce and you will note, at once, the slightly unpleasant and combative tone of the salesman but there is also so much glee contained in it, an anticipation of the joys of a difficult battle, that even a person of fine scruples, sensitive to the vulgarity of the salesman type (such as yourself, Professor) need not be offended but rather challenged by the contradiction contained herein, i. e. that this crass aggression can co-exist with an ability to draw very fine moral distinctions and to see, very objectively, the damage his father's business was doing to the fauna of the country he loved and that, further - like real estate for instance - it was one of those great Australian enterprises that generate wealth while making nothing new.”

Peter Carey book Illywhacker

Page 561.
Illywhacker (1985)

Love, Business, Joy, Drawing

“Although people cannot define existence and do use the term with some looseness, yet it is possible to give an extensive definition by pointing to the sorts of things that everyone believes to exist. It is still easier to point to the sort of entities that people agree in believing not to exist, and happily, this is really what concerns us most. People mean by saying that causation only applies to things that exist that it applies, if at all, to what can change; and they believe that, if anything can change, it is things like chairs and tables and minds, and not those like the propositions of Euclid and the multiplication table. What would be agreed then is that, if causal laws apply to anything it is to what can change in so far as it changes.”

C. D. Broad (1887–1971) English philosopher

Perception, Physics, and Reality : An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can Supply about the Real (1914), Ch. 2 : On Causation; and on the Arguments that have been used against Causal Laws

People, Law, Change

“But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter IX: "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record", page 280 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=298&itemID=F373&viewtype=image

“As theories are the means by which we attempt to discourse of external existences that our senses cannot discover; and as the desire for such discourse originates a large portion of our theories; I will teach you the capacity of language for such an employment, and thereby enable you to judge more understandingly than you can at present, the utility of most theories, and the signification of all.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Lecture I. §4.
A Treatise on Language: Or, The Relation which Words Bear to Things, in Four Parts (1836)

Sense

“Existence is the end of endless eternity without a beginning or an end.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Eternity and Existence,” p. 31
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “Skywalking”

“[Y]ou see evidence in the united Europe—in which there is free circulation of people and ideas—of a much more homegrown European-style antisemitism. You see a sort of waning of vigilance. You see a rise of the kind of clubby, dinner-party type antisemitism in England, where it is very strong. So I do think there is a new antisemitism, but I'm afraid it hasn't so much replaced the old antisemitism as exists alongside of it.”

Christopher Caldwell (1962) American political writer

Interview with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (2007)

People, Idea, Thinking, Strong

“To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Dion Fortune, Spiritualism and Occultism

People, Imagination, Reality, Parting

“I don't have to begin, as I would have if I were speaking for the Church, with any apologies. We don't have a lot to apologize for. It wasn't we who framed Galileo, it wasn't we who said that God wanted the Crusades, it wasn't we who mounted the Inquisition, it wasn't we who sponsored Pavoloch, Salazar, Mussolini, Dollfuss, Hitler, Vichy, Franco, and the rest of it; and it wasn't we who preached the Easter sermon saying who was responsible for the death of a mythical figure, and creating ludicrous pain to real people, in the real world. We don't have to begin by proving that our institutions and our beliefs are human, as all human institutions are; that we are only mammals, as his holiness the Pope is only a mammal. We don't make a mystery where none exists. We say that we face the heavens, and we find them empty; and that some of us, at any rate, are not alarmed to find this emptiness; and would be more alarmed to find the heavens full of permanent supervision and invigilation; and that an ethical life may be led by someone with no supernatural means of support, without the fear, if it is a fear, or the hope, if it is a hope, of celestial invigilation.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Life, Death, God, Pain

“The Uniﬁed Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose visual modeling language that is used to specify, visualize, construct, and document the artifacts of a software system. It captures decisions and understanding about systems that must be constructed. It is used to understand, design, browse, conﬁgure, maintain, and control information about such systems. It is intended for use with all development methods, lifecycle stages, application domains, and media. The modeling language is intended to unify past experience about modeling techniques and to incorporate current software best practices into a standard approach. UML includes semantic concepts, notation, and guidelines. It has static, dynamic, environmental, and organizational parts. It is intended to be supported by interactive visual modeling tools that have code generators and report writers. The UML speciﬁcation does not deﬁne a standard process but is intended to be useful with an iterative development process. It is intended to support most existing object-oriented development processes.”

Ivar Jacobson (1939) Swedish computer scientist

James Rumbaugh, Ivar Jacobson, & Grady Booch (1999) The Unified Modeling Language Reference Manual. p. 1.

Understanding, Support, Decision, Past

“I think more audiences would like contemporary music if they were presented with it, told about it. It's just a matter of familiarity, I think. Then one begins to look back at old music as stuffy, or even tiresome. It's funny -- I'm beginning to like older music more than I used to, but it's like I'm going into a museum and contemplating a Rembrandt. It just feels like its part of the aristocratic class system of kings and queens and dukes which just doesn't exist anymore.”

Elliott Carter (1908–2012) American composer

From American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter http://edwebproject.org/carter.html (1993) by Andy Carvin.

Music, Feeling, Thinking, Parting

“The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events. To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge has not yet been able to set foot.
But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal. For a doctrine which is able to maintain itself not in clear light but only in the dark, will of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human progress. In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is, give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast power in the hands of priests. In their labors they will have to avail themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself. This is, to be sure, a more difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, Science and Religion (1941)

God, Fear, Religion, Beauty

“Why do economists persist in modelling the economy with static tools when dynamic ones exist; why do they treat as stationery an entity which is forever changing?”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 8, Let's Do The Time Warp Again, p. 177

Change

“There were three men whose lives became confused in history and merged, and whose composite history became known as the life of Christ... Each was highly gifted psychically, knew of his role, and accepted it willingly. The three men were a part of one entity, gaining physical existence in one time. They were not born on the same date, however. There are reasons why the entity did not return as one person. For one thing, the full consciousness would be too strong for one physical vehicle. For another, the entity wanted a more diversified environment than could otherwise be provided.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 271-272

Life, Men, History, Strong

“Education is a set of analogies to a genuinely human existence, of which the arts are the model. Merely human life is of course a demonic analogy or parody of genuinely human life.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 149

Life, Education, Art

“There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are sciences and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Revue Scientifique (1871)
Variant translation: There are no such things as applied sciences, only applications of science.

Tree, Science

“It is important to remember that when the body tells you to sleep or rest, it does so because it needs time to rejuvenate itself. Therefore, getting proper rest will help all aspects of existence. […] Try to eat no later than three hours before lying down. If you want to maximize the nourishing benefits of sleep, you should try to go to bed before 10 p. m.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 23

Lying, Sleep, Time, Help

“Despite a relative control over expenditure in 2013, the persistence of a very high public deficit (4.3%) was mainly due to an unprecedented and unexpected drop in tax revenue which confirms the existence of a tax tolerance threshold, specific to each country, and which may have been reached in France. Above this threshold, any tax increase has a counterproductive effect as compulsory taxes stifle activity by further weakening the economy’s growth potential.”

Éric Pichet (1960) economist

Le programme de stabilité et le pacte de responsabilité : la trajectoire des finances publiques de 2014 à 2017 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2499496 Article in Revue de Droit Fiscal n31-35 (2014). Tax policy, The Tax tolerance Threshold

Country

“Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are— that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.” This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a “pressure,” a “reproach,” and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe’s reflection that “against another’s great merits, there is no remedy but love.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 52-53

Love, Men, Forgiveness, Nature

“The task of a theory of class is to identify the existing conditions for potential collective struggle and express them as a political proposition.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

104
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

“Corruption has its own motivations, and one has to thoroughly study that phenomenon and eliminate the foundations that allow corruption to exist.”

Eduard Shevardnadze (1928–2014) Georgian politician and diplomat

As quoted in The Many Faces of Corruption (2007) edited by J. Edgardo Campos and ‎Sanjay Pradhan, p. 267.

Motivation, Study

“A world without nuclear weapons may be a dream but you cannot base a sure defence on dreams. Without far greater trust and confidence between East and West than exists at present, a world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at a Soviet Official banquet http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=106776, St George's Halls, the Kremlin (30 March 1987) Second term as Prime Minister

World, Dreams, Confidence

“When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

War power authority should be returned to Congress, March. 9, 1999 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec99/cr030999.htm 1990s

War, Personality

“If the State, modeled after the universe, is split into two spheres or classes of beings – wherein the free represent the ideas and the unfree the concrete and sensate things – then the ultimate and uppermost order remains unrealized by both. By using sensate things as tools or organs, the ideas obtain a direct relationship to the apparitions and enter into them as souls. God, however, as identity of the highest order, remains above all reality and eternally has merely an indirect relationship. If then in the higher moral order the State represents a second nature, then the divine can never have anything other than an indirect relationship to it, never can it bear any real relationship to it, and religion, if it seeks to preserve itself in unscathed pure ideality, can therefore never exist – even in the most perfect State – other than esoterically in the form of mystery cults. P. 51”

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) German philosopher (idealism)

Philosophy and Religion 1804)

God, Religion, Soul, Idea

“ensuring that unity of action, discipline, anticipation, activity, order, etc., exist in all parts of the enterprise;”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

L’exposé des principes généraux d’administration, 1908

Parting

“I haven't really touched machinery except for a few elementary mechanisms like levers and balances. You see nature and then you try to emulate it. But, of course, when I met Mondrian [Paris, 1930] I went home and tried to paint [for a while]. The basis of everything for me is the universe. The simplest forms in the universe are the sphere and the circle. I represent them by disks and then I vary them. My whole theory about art is the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement. Even my triangles are spheres, but they are spheres of a different shape.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Question, Which has influenced you more, nature or modern machinery?
1950s - 1960s, interview with Alexander Calder', (1962)

Art, Home, Nature, Universe

“That which is produced with intention has passed over from non-existence to existence.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.13

“Information impactedness is a derivative condition that arises mainly because of uncertainty and opportunism, though bounded rationality is involved as well. It exists when true underlying circumstances relevant to the transaction, or related set of transactions, are known to one or more parties but cannot be costlessly discerned by or displayed for others.”

Oliver E. Williamson (1932) American economist

Oliver E. Williamson (1975) Markets and Hierarchies p. 31.

“If we believe in the existence of a great moral and political evil amongst us, and that duty, honour, and interest, call upon us to prepare the way for its removal, we must act.”

Francis Scott Key (1779–1843) American lawyer and poet

Speech before the Colonization Society https://books.google.com/books?id=AoS2cqFQCSoC&pg=PA50

Way, Evil

“The war industries in many countries and the enormous trade in weapons of all kinds generate corruption and fuel conflict throughout the world. The existence of an immensely powerful military-industrial complex constitutes a danger to democracy, both internationally and domestically, because it follows its own logic and operates independently of popular participation.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred de Zayas' comments to the remarks made by NGOs and States during the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council Session http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13713&LangID=E Comments by Alfred de Zayas, Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, following the Interactive Dialogue on the presentation of his thematic report. 2013

War, World, Democracy, Country

““Whites” are not derived from a population that existed from time immemorial, as some people believe. Instead, “whites” represent a mixture of four ancient populations that lived 10,000 years ago and were each as different from one another as Europeans and East Asians are today.”

David Reich (geneticist) (1974) American geneticist, Professor of Genetics

How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’ https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html, NY Times, 23 March, 2018

People, Time

“Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. In fulfilling this task, the Indian intelligentsia of tomorrow willhave to solve a puzzle: what were the earlier generations of Indian thinkers busy with, in the course of the last two to three thousand years? The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange andgrotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow-burning exists and corruption is rampant. If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of Europeanculture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkersin Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defendingundesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha andour Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have butone task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.”

S. N. Balagangadhara (1952) Indian philosopher

Foreword by S. N. Balagangadhara in "Invading the Sacred" (2007)
Source: Balagangadhara, S.N. (2007), "Foreword." In Ramaswamy, de Nicolas & Banerjee (Eds.), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America . Delhi: Rupa & Co., pp. vii–xi.

Women, Pain, World, School

“But in a little measure my small voice of individual experience does join in the declaration of philosophy that the good is the only world, and that world is a world of spirit. It is also a universe where order is All, where an unbroken logic holds the parts together, where disorder defines itself as non-existence, where evil, as St. Augustine held, is delusion, and therefore is not.”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

World, Universe, Evil, Parting

“Among them exists an immense opportunity for the spread of views such as Tolstoy held, but instead of espousing their cause or seeking in any manner to organize the peasants for cooperative action, he [Tolstoy] invariably taught them submission, nonresistance to evil, loyalty to their masters, and the most extreme form of Christian humility and service.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 69

Evil, Loyalty

“The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 7

Heart

“Plato was accused by some of his twentieth-century critics of racism, totalitarianism, fascism, and other political crimes with a very contemporary flavor. These accusations are too anachronistic to be taken seriously; whatever explains Hitler and Mussolini, it is not the dialogues of Plato. The more plausible complaint is that Plato does not take seriously the inescapability of politics in some form. Plato’s metaphysics is fascinating; so is his conviction that the just man does better than the unjust man, no matter what earthly fate befalls him. His political thinking often amounts to an injunction to abolish the conflicts that politics exists to resolve and fantasies about how it might be done.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 2 : Plato and Antipolitics

Fate, Thinking

“It is my view and hope that Israel will have our continued support. I wish it every success. Of course, what Israel regards as success is up to it to decide. But for friends like me, "success" means a secure Israel at peace with neighbors who recognize and respect its existence. Even so, we should maintain our special relationship and help Israel keep its qualitative military edge.”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

How to Secure Israel: Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement (April 2008)

Peace, Hope, Support, Success

“The existence of a law is one thing, its merits or demerits is are another thing. Whether a law be, is one inquiry; whether it ought to be o whether it agree with a given or assumed test, is another and a distinct inquiry.”

John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher

Variant:
The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry. A law, which actually exists, is a law, though we happen to dislike it, or though it vary from the text, by which we regulate our approbation and disapprobation.
John Austin, Austin Lectures on Jurisprudence; or The Philosophy of Positive Law, 1873, Lecture V
Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 278

Law

“There is no permanent equilibrium in human affairs. Faith, wisdom, and art allow one to attain it for a time; then outside influences and the souls' passions destroy it, and one must climb the rock again in he same manner. This vacillation round a fixed point is life, and the certainty that such a point exists is happiness. As the most ardent love, of one analyses its separate moments, is made up of innumerable minute conflicts settled invariably by fidelity, so happiness, if one reduces it to its important elements, is made up of struggles and anguish, and always saved by hope.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness

Love, Life, Wisdom, Faith