Quotes about existence
page 41

“A nebulous matter, diffused in such exuberance throughout the regions of space, must surely draw our attention to the purpose for which it probably may exist; and it must be the business of a critical inquirer to attend to all the appearances under which it will be exposed to his view…”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Business, Appearance, Drawing

“The temple of the most high begins with the human body, which houses our life, essence of our existence. Africans are in bondage today because they approach spirituality through Religion provided by foreign invaders and conquerors. We must stop confusing religion and spirituality. Religion is a set of rules, regulations and rituals created by humans which were supposed to help people grow spiritually.
Due to human imperfection religion has become corrupt, political, divisive and a tool for power struggle. Spirituality is not theology or ideology. It is simply a way of life, pure and original as was given by the Most High. Spirituality is a network linking us to the Most High, the universe and each other. As the essence of our existence it embodies our culture, true identity, nationhood and destiny. A people without a nation they can really call their own is a people without a soul. Africa is our nation and is in spiritual and physical bondage because her leaders are turning to outside forces for solutions to African problems when everything Africa needs is within her. When African righteous people come together, the world will come together. This is our divine destiny.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Words of Appollo P.K Nvenge aka Amentu P.K N'venge in the book African Unity: the Only Solution, missatributed to Haile Selassie by different sources.
Misattributed

Life, People, World, Religion

“Did you see that wee church in Salamanca where the Virgin's statue had eyes that moved? Your priest there said it was a miracle, but you could see the string the fellow jerked to make the wooden eyeballs twitch! But why go to the trouble of having a string? I asked myself. Because the people want a miracle, that's why. And just because some people invent a miracle doesn't mean there aren't real ones, does it? It means the opposite, so it does, for why would you imitate something that doesn't exist?”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sergeant Patrick Harper, p. 186
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Rifles (1988)

People, Jerk

“Perhaps as important is the relation between the existence of solutions to a competitive equilibrium and the problems of normative or welfare economics.”

Gérard Debreu (1921–2004) French economist and mathematician

Arrow, Kenneth J., and Gerard Debreu. " Existence of an equilibrium for a competitive economy http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cp/p00b/p0087.pdf." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1954): p. 265

Problem

“Tips on surviving the regime: Respect yourself and speak for others. Do one small thing every day to prove the existence of justice.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Ai Weiwei Twitter feed: @AiWW (12:39 p.m. August 6, 2009)
2000-09, Twitter feeds, 2009

Justice

“The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not have existed: accordingly he is here.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

“Cheap power helped create a new market that didn't exist previously.”

Andy Kessler (1958) American writer

Part II, Revolution, Pressure Drop, p. 66.
Running Money (2004) First Edition

Help

“What was special about America was not that it had slavery, which existed all over the world, but that Americans were among the very few peoples who began to question the morality of holding human beings in bondage. That was not yet a majority view among Americans in the 18th century, but it was not even a serious minority view.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"The Scapegoat for Strife in the Black Community" http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420807/slavery-didnt-cause-todays-black-problems-welfare-did (7 July 2015), National Review 2010s

People, World, Question

“The biggest hate crime against Muslims in America is the existence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. If you're a Muslim American who wants to live in peace and freedom — and, presumably, that's why you're in America in the first place — these people are your worst enemy. They're parasites on your identity. They don't represent you — they claim ownership of you. Everything they do and say reflects back, badly, on you. Yet you are the only thing giving them a veneer of respectability. Without you, these fanatics would be standing on street corners shouting at people. They invoke the phony lie of Islamophobia in order to marginalize and ghettoize you and to make you feel like a victim, because their whole existence depends on you being a victim. They claim to challenge the stereotyping of Muslims — and how do they do it? By stereotyping Muslims as professional complainers and malcontents who always want special treatment; who can't take the slightest criticism; and who are aggressively litigious to the point of obsession. These people are the problem. They're not the solution.”

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

"American Islamophobia" (11 January 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=6Ff3Qg6B_WY 2011

Hate, People, Lie, Peace

“Neither Bush nor Tony Blair has provided any evidence that such weapons exist. But what we know is that Israel has weapons of mass destruction. Nobody talks about that. Why should there be one standard for one country, especially because it is black, and another one for another country, Israel, that is white. … Many people say quietly, but they don't have the courage to stand up and say publicly, that when there were white secretary generals you didn't find this question of the United States and Britain going out of the United Nations. But now that you've had black secretary generals like Boutros Boutros Ghali, like Kofi Annan, they do not respect the United Nations. They have contempt for it. This is not my view, but that is what is being said by many people.”

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

2000s, Newsweek interview (2002)

People, Courage, Question, Country

“The thirteen Colonies were not unaware of the difficulties which these problems presented. We shall find a great deal of wisdom in the method by which they dealt with them. When they were finally separated from Great Britain, the allegiance of their citizens was not to the Nation, for there was none. It was to the States. For the conduct of the war there had been a voluntary confederacy loosely constructed and practically impotent. Continuing after peace was made, when the common peril which had been its chief motive no longer existed, it grew weaker and weaker. Each of the States could have insisted on an entirely separate and independent existence, having full authority over both their internal and external affairs, sovereign in every way. But such sovereignty would have been a vain and empty thing. It would have been unsupported by adequate resources either of property or population, without a real national spirit; ready to fall prey to foreign intrigue or foreign conquest. That kind of sovereignty meant but little. It had no substance in it. The people and their leaders naturally sought for a larger, more inspiring ideal. They realized that while to be a citizen of a State meant something, it meant a great deal more if that State were a part of a national union. The establishment of a Federal Constitution giving power and authority to create a real National Government did not in the end mean a detriment, but rather an increment to the sovereignty of the several States. Under the Constitution there was brought into being a new relationship, which did not detract from but added to the power and the position of each State. It is true that they surrendered the privilege of performing certain acts for themselves, like the regulation of commerce and the maintenance of foreign relations, but in becoming a part of the Union they received more than they gave.”

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

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Wisdom, War, People, Peace

“The shrewd, calculating commercialism which tries all human relations by pecuniary standards, the acquisitiveness which cannot rest while there are competitors to be conquered or profits to be won, the love of social power and hunger for economic gain—these irrepressible appetites had evoked from time immemorial the warnings and denunciations of saints and sages. Plunged in the cleansing waters of later Puritanism, the qualities which less enlightened ages had denounced as social vices emerged as economic virtues. They emerged as moral virtues as well. For the world exists not to be enjoyed, but to be conquered. Only its conqueror deserves the name of Christian. For such a philosophy, the question, [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+8%3A36&version=KJV "What shall it profit a man?"] carries no sting. In winning the world, he wins the salvation of his own soul as well.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 4
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

Love, Hunger, Age, World

“As a newly elected UKIP MEP, I had mixed feelings about my first visit to the European Parliament in Brussels. After all, I am visiting a parliament which I believe shouldn’t exist; however, I should, and will be there to act as the eyes and ears of the British people.”

Louise Bours (1968) British politician

People, Feeling

“Every feature that is known to exist in every bird universally accepted as such is also found on dinosaurs: four-chambered heart, fused caudal vertebrae, gastroliths, even the avian respiratory system have all been found on fossil theropods, especially dromaeosaurs and maniraptors. You can distinguish birds among dinosaurs, but it is no longer possible to distinguish birds from dinosaurs.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, Geerup's Terrible Lizard Classification https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhZeowON8l8 (July 28, 2009)

Bird, Universe, Heart

“There can be no doubt that the existence of public tortures and executions were connected with something quite other than this internal organization. Rusche and Kirchheimer are right to see it as the effect of a system of production in which labour power, and therefore the human body, has neither the utility nor the commercial value that are conferred on them in an economy of an industrial type. Moreover, this ‘contempt’ for the body is certainly related to a general attitude to death; and, in such an attitude, one can detect not only the values proper to Christianity, but a demographical, in a sense biological, situation: the ravages of disease and hunger, the periodic massacres of the epidemics, the formidable child mortality rate, the precariousness of the bio-economic balances – all this made death familiar and gave rise to rituals intended to integrate it, to make it acceptable and to give a meaning to its permanent aggression. But in analysing why the public executions survived for so long, one must also refer to the historical conjuncture; it must not be forgotten that the ordinance of 1670 that regulated criminal justice almost up to the Revolution had even increased in certain respects the rigour of the old edicts; Pussort, who, among the commissioners entrusted with the task of drawing up the documents, represented the intentions of the king, was responsible for this, despite the views of such magistrates as Lamoignon; the number of uprisings at the very height of the classical age, the rumbling close at hand of civil war, the king’s desire to assert his power at the expense of the parlements go a long way to explain the survival of so severe a penal system.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), pp. 51

Death, Hunger, War, Age

“A moment or an eternity—did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

We The Living (1936)

Life, Smile

“While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour.
One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?"
I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned.
"No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, 'Would you like to see my garden?' you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite."
"Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like, "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use.
Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple, and you want to look at the gardens…"
I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see."
"No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?"
Three or four different words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're doing it, it's elegant.
I was learning Japanese mainly for technical things, so I decided to check if this same problem existed among the scientists.
At the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the office, "How would I say in Japanese, 'I solve the Dirac Equation'?"
They said such-and-so.
"OK. Now I want to say, 'Would you solve the Dirac Equation?'”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

how do I say that?"
"Well, you have to use a different word for 'solve,' " they say.
"Why?" I protested. "When I solve it, I do the same damn thing as when you solve it!"
"Well, yes, but it's a different word — it's more polite."
I gave up. I decided that wasn't the language for me, and stopped learning Japanese.
Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "Would You Solve the Dirac Equation?", p. 245-246
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

Guy, Idea, Problem, Learning

“Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all.
One of the chief duties of a mathematician in acting as an advisor to scientists is to discourage them from expecting too much of mathematicians.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

As quoted in Comic Sections (1993) by D MacHale

“One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

Exercises, Soul, Failure, Loss

“For too long, African societies have been identified as superstitious, consisting of people who cannot question, reason or think critically. Dogma and blind faith in superstition, divinity and tradition are said to be the mainstay of popular thought and culture. African science is often equated with witchcraft and the occult; African philosophy with magical thinking, myth-making and mysticism, African religion with stone-age spiritual abracadabra, African medicine with folk therapies often involving pseudoscientific concoctions inspired by magical thinking. Science, critical thinking and technological intelligence are portrayed as Western — as opposed to universal — values, and as alien to Africa and to the African mindset. An African who thinks critically or seeks evidence and demands proofs for extraordinary claims is accused of taking a “white” or Western approach. An African questioning local superstitions and traditions is portrayed as having abandoned or betrayed the essence of African identity. Skepticism and rationalism are regarded as Western, un-African, philosophies. Although there is a risk of overgeneralizing, there are clear indicators that the continent is still socially, politically and culturally trapped by undue credulity. Many irrational beliefs exist and hold sway across the region. These are beliefs informed by fear and ignorance, misrepresentations of nature and how nature works. These misconceptions are often instrumental in causing many absurd incidents, harmful traditional practices and atrocious acts.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa (2012)

People, Age, Fear, Faith

“In the case of those solids, whether of earth, or rock, which enclose on all sides and contain crystals, selenites, marcasites, plants and their parts, bones and the shells of animals, and other bodies of this kind which are possessed of a smooth surface, these same bodies had already become hard at the time when the matter of the earth and rock containing them was still fluid. And not only did the earth and rock not produce the bodies contained in them, but they did not even exist as such when those bodies were produced in them.”

Nicolas Steno (1638–1686) Pioneer in anatomy and geology, bishop

The Prodromus of Nicolaus Steno's Dissertation Concerning a Solid https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/54340#/summary : (Page 217)

Time, Animals, Parting

“The study of contemporary species does not establish the existence of evolution; it provides facts which support it, but which do not fully demonstrate its existence. This is understandable, since at present we cannot show the series of successive stages which make up evolution, but only a fleeting picture of evolution.”

Pierre-Paul Grassé (1895–1985) French zoologist

Grassé, Pierre Paul (1977); Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation. Academic Press, p. 3
Evolution of living organisms: evidence for a new theory of transformation (1977)

Understanding, Support, Study, Success

“Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

VIII 2, as quoted in The Acentric Labyrinth (1995) by Ramon Mendoza
De immenso (1591)

Law, Time

“The work itself, whether thought of as image of idea, as revelation, or as a manifest of meaning, could not have existed without a profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition or remembrance, for a man’s term of life. Yet, while one looks at his works, a warning should be given, lest one forget, among the multitude of issues, the relation I bear to those with 'eyes'. Although the reference is in a different context and for another purpose, a metaphor is pertinent as William Blake set it down: THE Vision of Christ that thou dost see – Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy: - Thine is the friend of All Mankind, - Mine speaks in parables to the Blind: 'Therefore, let no man under-value the implications of this work or its power for life; - or for death, if it is misused'.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Letter to Gordon Smith, January 1, 1959, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 196
1950s

Life, Death, Idea, Christ

“If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?”

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

Quote in Vincent's letter to Emile Bernard, from Paris, about December 1887; from letter 575 - vangoghletters http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let575/letter.html] 1880s, 1887

Beauty, Thinking, Painting

“According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another”

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) German-American Evolutionary Biologist

Ernst Mayr (1992) " Speciational Evolution or Punctuated Equilibria http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/mayr_punctuated.html" in: Albert Somit and Steven Peterson (1992) The Dynamics of Evolution, p. 21-48

“The Pythagoreans discovered the existence of incommensurable lines, or of irrationals. This was, doubtless, first discovered with reference to the diagonal of a square which is incommensurable with the side, being in the ratio to it of √2 to 1. The Pythagorean proof of this particular case survives in Aristotle and in a proposition interpolated in Euclid's Book X.; it is by a reductio ad absurdum proving that, if the diagonal is commensurable with the side, the same number must be both odd and even. This discovery of the incommensurable… showed that the theory of proportion invented by Pythagoras was not of universal application and therefore that propositions proved by means of it were not really established…. The fatal flaw thus revealed in the body of geometry was not removed till Eudoxus discovered the great theory of proportion (expounded in Euclid's Book V.), which is applicable to incommensurable as well as to commensurable magnitudes.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

p, 125
Achimedes (1920)

Books, Universe

“The most remarkable feature of Bell's work was undoubtedly the possibility it offered to determine experimentally whether or not Einstein's ideas could be kept. The experimental tests of Bell inequalities gave an unambiguous answer: entanglement cannot be understood as usual correlations, whose interpretation relies on the existence of common properties, originating in a common preparation, and remaining attached to each individual object after separation, as components of their physical reality.”

Alain Aspect (1947) French physicist

"Introduction: John Bell and the second quantum revolution" (2004)

Idea, Reality

“Dinosaurs first existed around 6,000 years ago. Because dinosaurs were land animals, and God made all the land animals on day six of the creation week, dinosaurs were created on day six. Dinosaurs could not have died out before this time because death, bloodshed, disease and suffering is a result of Adam's sin. Adam and Eve were also made on day six alongside the dinosaurs - so dinosaurs lived with people. Representatives of all the KINDS of land animals, including the dinosaur kinds went on board Noah's ark. All those that were left behind drowned in the cataclysmic circumstances of the Flood - many of their remains became fossils. After the Flood (around 4,500 years ago), the land animals (including dinosaurs) came off the ark and lived in the present world, beside people. Because of sin, the judgement of the curse and the effects of the Flood have greatly changed the earth. Since the Flood, many animals have died out from diseases, a lack of food, etc. The dinosaurs, like many other creatures, seem to have also died out. According to this view, there is no mystery about dinosaurs!”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved! (2000)

Death, God, People, World

“Look up and below and all round and see the wonderful creations of God, not only our earth but the whole host of celestial worlds, planets, constellations etc. – many still unknown to us. See with what minute precision and order they move and are regulated. Only God could have created them. Ev all the accumulated genius of Mankind from the time of Creation through eons and eons of time and even to the end of existence, were all pooled together, yet it would not be able to evolve even a fraction of this order. God only could do so, and without him it would be utter chaos.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Planning for a Better World

God, World, Time

“I know God exists, I'm not stupid.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

AronRa vs Ray Comfort (September 17th, 2012), Radio Paul's Radio Rants

God, Stupidity

“And is there no possibility that there was a period, and several periods, when man existed, and yet was not an organic being — therefore could not have left any vestige of himself for exact science? Spirit leaves no skeletons or fossils behind, and yet few are the men on earth who doubt that man can live both objectively and subjectively. At all events, the theology of the Brahmans, hoary with antiquity, and which divides the formative periods of the earth into four ages, and places between each of these a lapse of 1,728,000 years, far more agrees with official science and modern discovery than the absurd chronological notions promulgated by the Councils of Nice and Trent.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter IX

Men, Age, Science

“If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person (for although some better individuals momentarily belong to the public they nevertheless have something concrete about them, which holds them in its grip even if they have not attained the supreme religious attitude), I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is some one superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coat-tails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity – until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled – and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The leveling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its significance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

The Present Age 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard, translated by Alexander Dru 1962, p. 65-66
1840s, Two Ages: A Literary Review (1846)

World, Dogs, Way, Imagination

“In that mysterious dimension where the body meets the soul the stereotype is born and has her being. She is more body than soul, more soul than mind. To her belongs all that is beautiful, eve the very word beauty itself. All that exists, exists to beautify her.”

Germaine Greer book The Female Eunuch

The Stereotype
The Female Eunuch (1970)

Beauty, Soul

“Natural historians tend to avoid tendentious preaching in this philosophical mode (although I often fall victim to such temptations in these essays). Our favored style of doubting is empirical: if I wish to question your proposed generality, I will search for a counterexample in flesh and blood. Such counterexamples exist in abundance, for they form a staple in a standard genre of writing in natural history — the “wonderment of oddity” or “strange ways of the beaver” tradition.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Reversing Established Orders", p. 394
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Way, History, Search, Question

“Put bluntly, there is an archaic God, a magic God, a mythic God, a mental God, and an integral God. Which God do you believe in?
An archaic God sees divinity in any strong instinctual force. A magic God locates divine power in the human ego and its magical capacity to change the animistic world with rituals and spells. A mythic God is located not on this earth but in a heavenly paradise not of this world, entrance to which is gained by living according to the covenants and rules given by this God to his peoples. A mental God is a rational God, a demythologized Ground of Being that underlies all forms of existence. And an integral God is one that embraces all of the above.
Which of those Gods is the most important? According to an integral view, all of them, because each "higher" stage actually builds upon and includes the lower, so the lower stages are more fundamental and the higher stages are more significant, but leave out any one of them and you're in trouble. You are, that is, less than integral, less than comprehensive, less than inclusive in your understanding of God.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Which Level of God Do You Believe In? (2004)

God, People, World, Understanding

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

"Introduction", page 5 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=20&itemID=F373&viewtype=image On the Origin of Species (1859)

Life, Nature, Strong, Chance

“We may assume the existence of an aether; only we must give up ascribing a definite state of motion to it, i. e. we must by abstraction take from it the last mechanical characteristic which Lorentz had still left it. … But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable inedia, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.”

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

On the irrelevance of the luminiferous aether hypothesis to physical measurements, in an address at the University of Leiden (5 May 1920)
1920s

Idea, Time, Parting

“[The coming war is] the last battle between Teutons and Slavs [which would] find the Anglo-Saxons on the side of the Slavs and the Gauls…[England] wanted to forbid other Powers to defend their interests…with the sword. … England will undoubtedly stand behind France and Russia against Germany out of hatred and envy. The imminent struggle for existence which the Germanic peoples of Europe (Austria, Germany) will have to fight out against the Slavs (Russians) and their Latin (Gallic) supporters finds the Anglo-Saxons on the side of the Slavs. Reason: petty envy, fear of our growing big.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Marginal note on report from the German ambassador to London, Prince Lichnowsky (December 1912), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 32
1910s

War, People, Fear, Support

“Most probably some law hitherto undiscovered exists.”

Arthur Schuster (1851–1934) Anglo-German physicist

commenting the misunderstood law governing the spectral lines in light, in [Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Volume 31, Royal Society, 1881, 343]

Law

“I always felt that there had to be much more [than] just… shaking it, you know, eternally. Or just making music. Or more even than the pure enjoyment of entertaining someone – being on stage, which is a tremendous rush of adrenaline. But there had to be something else to my life. And I feel that with this work that I do, that’s how my life gets fulfilled. And how I find a purpose to my own existence. And I do feel that music is the platform. It’s become the vehicle that allows me to use my voice to speak about those issues that need urgent attention. I can take the spotlight that shines on me and shift it towards those issues that are infinitely more important than my own issues.”

Shakira (1977) Colombian singer

Life, Music, Feeling

“There is a philosophical, or metaphysical position that can be taken–maybe its a scientific hypothesis–that the past cannot in fact exist. Everything that can possibly exist exists now. Things now may be expressive of some conceivable or describable past state of affairs, yes:but that's different from saying this this former state actually somehow exists in the form of "the past". Even in our memory[…]there is no past:no scenes preserved with all their sights and sounds. Merely fleeting states of mind, myriad points assembled for a moment to make a new picture (but "picture" is wrong too, too full, too fixed) of what we think are former states of things: things that once were, or may have been the case.”

John Crowley book Four Freedoms

Prelude
Four Freedoms (2009)

Thinking, Memory, Past

“When [ Abraham ] the "Pillar of the World" appeared, he became convinced that there is a spiritual Divine Being, which is not a body, nor a force residing in a body, but is the author of the spheres and the stars; and he saw the absurdity of the tales in which he had been brought up. He therefore began to attack the belief of the Sabeans, to expose the falsehood of their opinions, and to proclaim publicly in opposition to them, "the name of the Lord, the God of the Universe" (Gen. xxi. 33), which proclamation included at the same time the Existence of God, and the Creation of the Universe by God.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.29

God, World, Star, Universe

“This paper integrates elements from the theory of agency, the theory of property rights and the theory of finance to develop a theory of the ownership structure of the firm. We define the concept of agency costs, show its relationship to the 'separation and control' issue, investigate the nature of the agency costs generated by the existence of debt and outside equity, demonstrate who bears the costs and why, and investigate the Pareto optimality of their existence. We also provide a new definition of the firm, and show how our analysis of the factors influencing the creation and issuance of debt and equity claims is a special case of the supply side of the completeness of markets problem.”

Michael Jensen (1939) American economist

Source: "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure", 1976, p. 305 Abstract

Optimism, Nature, Problem

“If you are deemed a racist, you must have been one forever; your racism has been unearthed and revealed, not merely spotted in a single incident. Neither is there any hope of rehabilitating you. Your whole life, your whole existence, is stained. It is a Maoist tactic to dehumanize and destroy your opponents.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: Spooks and Speech Controls, archive.lewrockwell.com, 2016-05-22 http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig/tucker4.html,

Life, Hope

“What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.”

Robert Owen (1771–1858) Welsh social reformer

Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark (1816)

Health, Intelligence, Idea, Universe

“More was lost there than mere life and existence: we were overthrown for all time to come.”
Plus est quam vita salusque quod perit: in totum mundi prosternimur aevum.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia

Book VII, line 639 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia

Life, Time

“The sole means now for the saving of the beings of the planet Earth would be to implant again into their presences a new organ … of such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them.”

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

All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950)

Death, Sense

“Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60

Reality

“There were three known existing sapphires. One was in the Conquest of Space Museum on Terra, one was in the hands of United System President Polonius Delph—he was the richest man in seven worlds, or had been until he’d paid cash for his jewel. The other had been stolen soon after its discovery. Maybe Delph had it…
“From what I understand of your world, Delph isn’t the only one who wants the sapphires. He has rivals in the Plutocracy. Another mysterious collector? Or those rivals are competing for the presidency or they think they can ruin him. As you know, it’s a vicious circle in politics. You can’t get to be president unless you have the wealth and you can’t really make massive sums until you’re president.””

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: Short fiction, The Lost Canal (2013), p. 355

World, Understanding, Thinking, Wealth

“Love is not dependency or sex, but is friendship, and, therefore, love can't exist between two males, between a male and a female or between two females, one or both of whom is a mindless, insecure, pandering male; like conversation it can exist only between two secure, free-wheeling, independent, groovy female females, as friendship is based on”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

respect, not contempt.
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 10 ("respect, not contempt." (not bracketed in original) not certain in original due to truncation of bottom of photocopy page but consistent with it).

Love, Friendship, Sex, Dependency

“[Interviewer: Do you believe in climate change? Do you think it exists? ] Er, there is a cooling and there is a heating, and I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. [Interviewer: Right. ] Right? That wasn't working too well, because it was getting too cold all over the place. The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records, OK, they're at a record level.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interviewed on British TV https://www.itv.com/news/2018-01-29/what-we-learned-from-donald-trumps-interview-with-itv/ (28 January 2018) 2010s, 2018, January

Thinking, Change

“Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Sin esa tonta vanidad que es el mostrarnos y que es de todos y de todo, no veríamos nada y no existiría nada. [[]]
Voces (1943)

Parting

“Every creature, every work of God, is admirably well made; but if any one appears imperfect in our eyes, it does not belong to us to criticise it. Perhaps that which we do not find right in its kind, turns to our advantage, without our being able to perceive it. Let us look at the state of the heavens, one while the sun shines, another time it does not appear; now the weather is fine; again it is unpleasant; one day is hot, another is cold; another time it is rainy, snowy or cloudy; every thing is variable and inconstant. Let us look at the surface of the earth: here the ground is flat; there it is hilly and mountainous; in other places it is sandy; in others it is barren; and elsewhere it is productive. Let us, in thought, go into an orchard or forest. What do we see? Trees high or low, large or small, upright or crooked, fruitful or unfruitful. Let us look at the birds of the air, and at the fishes of the sea, nothing resembles another thing. Let us look at the beasts. We see among the same kinds some of different forms, of different dimensions, domestic or wild, harmless or ferocious, useful or useless, pleasing or hideous. Some are bred for men's sakes; some for their own pleasures and amusements; some are of no use to us. There are faults in their organization as well as in that of men. Those who are acquainted with the veterinary art, know this well; but as for us who have not made a study of this science, we seem not to discover or remark these faults. Let us now come to ourselves. Our intellectual faculties as well as our corporeal organization have their imperfections. There are faculties both of the mind and heart, which education improve; there are others which it does not correct. I class in this number, idiotism, imbecility, dulness. But nothing can correct the infirmities of the bodily organization, such as deafness, blindness, lameness, palsy, crookedness, ugliness. The sight of a beautiful person does not make another so likewise, a blind person does not render another blind. Why then should a deaf person make others so also? Why are we Deaf and Dumb? Is it from the difference of our ears? But our ears are like yours; is it that there may be some infirmity? But they are as well organized as yours. Why then are we Deaf and Dumb? I do not know, as you do not know why there are infirmities in your bodies, nor why there are among the human kind, white, black, red and yellow men. The Deaf and Dumb are everywhere, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in Europe and America. They existed before you spoke of them and before you saw them.”

Laurent Clerc (1785–1869) French-American deaf educator

Statement of 1818, quoted in Through Deaf Eyes: A Photographic History of an American Community (2007) by Douglas C. Baynton, Jack R. Gannon, and Jean Lindquist Bergey

Men, God, Pleasure, Education

“The idea of objectivity in the evaluation of pictures introduces the concept of rational and scientific assessment. There are some sciences involved in the making and in the study of pictures, but the art itself is finally not a science and will not submit to scientific regimentation because its life depends on the degree to which it is inhabited by mystery, speaks to us of the unknown. It is simply an avoidance of the interesting difficulty to subject the inexplicable to the process of rational explanation. For since the real pleasures of painting and the reality of its meaning exist in the part of its structure which cannot be explained, all suggestions and pretensions at explanation must lead us away from the area of greatest interest. This is to say that such analysis as purports to lay bare the machinery which makes a painting work — makes it a good painting — not only leaves out the most important factor, the element of mystery, but actively denies the reality which is the justification for the art at all.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

X magazine (1959-62)

Life, Pleasure, Art, Idea

“There were women in the golden age of Greece, called hetaerae, who were celebrated by Socrates and philosophers of his time. Although they existed solely for their own pleasure and that of men, they were respected for their independence of mind and spirit and thought of highly by the Greeks. Single women in today's world can function like hetaerae, learning from many and giving back to whom they will, and for the woman who enjoys such a life, it can be a good one, and one both she and society can be the better for.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Life, Women, Men, Pleasure

“The Ten Commandments weren't historical. They're mythical, because they never existed and neither did Moses, neither does God; none of that is evidently real. Even rabbinical scholars now admit a consensus among archaeologists that the Exodus never happened, because the Hebrews were never enslaved in Egypt the way the Bible describes. Moses's childhood river arc was taken from the Saga of Sargon, and the parting of the Red Sea was adapted from the legend of an Egyptian pharaoh from an earlier millennium [Snefru and Djadjamankh]. Belief in the Ten Commandments never changed anything for the better either; most of the believers professing to promote them can't even recite them, and never knew what they meant.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

God, Way, Change, Parting

“At this moment the most stable Government in the world is our own, and it is solely because, in its real essence, it is the most free, in the only sense in which Freedom really exists; where men can act at their own free discretion, restrained only by the necessities of Justice. If the spirit of the Constitution is to be observed, that great instrument is always self-preserving. It needs only to be followed to be safeguarded.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From Does Price Fixing Destroy Liberty? (1920) by George H. Earle, Jr.

Men, World, Justice, Sense

“The United States is an illegitimate country, just like Israel. It has no right to exist. That country belongs to the Red man, the American Indian… It's actually a shame to be a so-called American, because everybody living there is a usurper, an invader taking part in this crime, which is to rob the land, rob the country and kill all the American Indians.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Interview en-route to Iceland, March 24 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QryuMf8qZ0g 2000s

Parting, Country

“The nuclear power industry, for example, lacks a strong union, has random public victims with delayed effects, has no safety board that is independent of licensing and regulatory functions, and does not see an immediate effect on its profits if safety flags (though a far more severe incentive exists to avoid a catastrophic accident which could shut down the industry)”

Charles Perrow book Normal Accidents

Source: 1980s and later, Normal Accidents, 1984, p. 127

Strong

“I have tried to show pragmatism as a moment in the swing of thought from realism to idealism, and how for it the most vital, that is to say, the moral and religious aspects of our world are things to work and fight for, to make and to mould, not just to find and come across. Its god is indeed a god of battles, and we are his soldiers on whom his victory depends. But as I view this battle, it is not to be fought out in heart throes and outpourings of sentiment. These may indeed change and better human relationships; but it must not be forgotten that human relationships exist in a physical universe that is older than they, and promises to outlast them. Now, just the physics of things show a strong tendency to be amoral and atheistic. "You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees.”

Edgar A. Singer, Jr. (1873–1954) American philosopher

Source: Modern thinkers and present problems, (1923), p. 243-44: Partly cited in: John Barton (1999, p. 10)

God, World, Strong, Universe

“We perceive nature through the senses, which give us images of forms of colour, sounds etc. A form which exists only in relation to another form on its own, it does not exist.”

Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940) French painter

11 Nov 1888.
Private Journal - A collage of notes and images, sketches kept 1888-1895 & 1907 to 1940

Nature, Sense

“The vitality of the individual… depends on his success in fashioning a character resistant to the narrowing of experience, to the rigidity of response, and to the consequent constriction of possibility that surrender to a hardened version of what the self implies. "He was so extremely natural," said Santayana of William James, "that there was no way of telling what his nature was, or what came next." It is an observation that states an ideal, suitable to the ambitions of personality under democracy. The point is not to make war against habit or to make war against one self. It is to fashion a style of existence, a mode of the self, in which we lower our defenses enough to strengthen our readiness for the new, our attachment to life, and our love of the world.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 130

Love, Life, War, World

“The European Union is not, in fact, a union at all, but a continent-wide political coup. What began as a common market has now metamorphosed by stealth into a supranational political dictatorship, a parasitical organism living on the backs of the European nation states, sucking their lifeblood and slowly killing them off; a bureaucratic tyranny that wants to "harmonize" out of existence the national identities that have made Europe a continent of genuine diversity and a cultural crucible whose values have shaped the entire western world. But they want to put a stop to all that in the European Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and this is why European laws are never enacted in response to any kind of organic need in society, but as top-down directives intended to impose indiscriminate uniformity for its own sake.”

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

"Europe needs a revolution" (25 August 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=s3u9LB32YYM 2011

World, Law

“Humankind is an insignificant part of existence.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.27

Parting

“There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

F 84
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook F (1776-1779)

Men

“It must be said that charity can, in no way, exist along with mortal sin.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Quaestiones disputatae: De caritate (ca. 1270) http://dhspriory.org/thomas/QDdeVirtutibus2.htm#6

Way

“Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

(1847)

People, Education, Way

“Annette’s communiqué is anodyne; a giggling confession off camera (shower-curtain rain in the background) that the famous Manfred Macx is in Paris for a weekend of clubbing, drugging, and general hell-raising. Oh, and he’s promised to invent three new paradigm shifts before breakfast every day, starting with a way to bring about the creation of Really Existing Communism by building a state central planning apparatus that interfaces perfectly with external market systems and somehow manages to algorithmically outperform the Monte Carlo free-for-all of market economics, solving the calculation problem. Just because he can, because hacking economics is fun, and he wants to hear the screams from the Chicago School.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), pp. 57-58

School, Way, Communication, Hell

“These are vital issues, in which the Nation greatly needs a revival of interest and concern. It is senseless to boast of our liberty when we find that to so shocking an extent it is merely the liberty to go ill-governed. It is time to take warning that neither the liberties we prize nor the system under which we claim them are safe while such conditions exist.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Time

“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

God, People, Help

“In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness (1943), p. 237, 1998 edition

Life

“The definite mass ratios involved in reactions suggested a convenient method for counting the number of atoms of each element participating in the reaction. These results, summarized as the laws of chemical combination, provided overwhelming, if indirect, evidence for the existence of atoms and molecules.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 1 : The Atom in Modern Chemistry

Law

“Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

People, Law, Teachers

“There are numerous forms of marginalization that exist in our society: racism, classism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, and so on. If you happen to be on the wrong side of any of these hierarchies, you will face many inequities and injustices. … Some people are single-issue activists that are only concerned about a single form of marginalization, usually one that impacts them personally. Single-issue perspectives create a distorted view of the world, and lead activists to propose solutions that will help some people while hurting others and leaving countless more behind. … In contrast, others of us take a more intersectional approach, recognizing that all forms of marginalization intersect with and exacerbate one another, and that we must challenge all of them simultaneously.”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

People, World, Help, Hurt

“Political independence, as the right to owe his existence and continuance in society not to the arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers as a member of the commonwealth.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Science of Right (1797)

“I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don’t like. No other criterion exists for me.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to I.L. Leontev (March 22, 1890)
Letters

“Could it be argued that if the Chinese revolution seems to be a response to the needs of rural society, whereas the Russian is an urbanized phenomenon, this difference corresponds to that which exists between the users of two different forms of written communication, the one archaic, the other alphabetic?”

Eric A. Havelock (1903–1988) 1903-1988, British classical philologist

"Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)

Communication

“I find it expressed in various passages of Scripture that the fact that God knows things while in a state of possibility, when their existence belongs to the future, does not change the nature of the possible in any way; that nature remains unchanged; and the knowledge of the realisation of one of several possibilities does not yet effect that realisation. This is likewise one of the fundamental principles of the Law of Moses concerning which there is no doubt nor any dispute.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.20

God, Law, Way, Nature

“The world needs new moral impulses which, I'm afraid, won't come from the churches, heavily compromised as they have been throughout the centuries. Perhaps those impulses must come from scientists in the tradition of Galileo, Kepler and Newton. In spite of failures and persecutions, these men devoted their lives to proving that the universe is a single entity, in which, I believe, a humanized God has no place. The genuine scientist is not moved by praise or blame, nor does he preach. He unveils the universe and people come eagerly, without being pushed, to behold a new revelation: the order, the harmony, the magnificence of creation! And as man becomes conscious of the stupendous laws that govern the universe in perfect harmony, he begins to realize how small he is. He sees the pettiness of human existence, with its ambitions and intrigues, its "I am better than thou" creed. This is the beginning of cosmic religion within him; fellowship and human service become his moral code. And without such moral foundations, we are hopelessly doomed.”

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

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 66

Men, God, People, World

“Cybernetics is the science or the art of manipulating defensible metaphors; showing how they may be constructed and what can be inferred as a result of their existence.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Pask (1966) The Cybernetics of Human Performance and Learning. Cited in: George J. Klír (2001) Facets of Systems Science. p. 429.

Art, Science

“Life, as it exists on Earth in the form of men, animals and plants, is to be found, let us suppose in a high form in the solar and stellar regions. Rather than think that so many stars and parts of the heavens are uninhabited and that this earth of ours alone is peopled – and that with beings perhaps of an inferior type – we will suppose that in every region there are inhabitants, differing in nature by rank and all owing their origin to God, who is the center and circumference of all stellar regions”

Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) German philosopher, theologian, jurist, and astronomer

De docta ignorantia http://www.challzine.net/29/29extraterr.html

Life, Men, God, People

“The territorial state has not always existed in the past, so it need not necessarily exist in the future.”

Joseph Nye (1937) American political scientist

Source: Understanding International Conflicts: An Introduction to Theory and History (6th ed., 2006), Chapter 9, A New World Order?, p. 262.

Past, Future

“One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Countess Brenhilda in Count Robert of Paris (1832), Ch. 25.

Life, Men, Water

“The trenches wound in meandering lines and white faces peered from dark dugouts – a lot of men were still preparing the positions, and everywhere among them there were graves. Where they sat, beside their dugouts, even between the sandbags, crosses stuck out. Corpses jammed in among them. It sounds like fiction – one man was frying potatoes on a grave next to his dugout. The existence of life here had already become a paradoxical joke.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

a letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 21 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213
1900s - 1920s

Life, Men

“Is the very mechanism for the universe to come into being meaningless or unworkable or both unless the universe is guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little time in its history-to-be? The quantum principle shows that there is a sense in which what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past—even in a past so remote that life did not then exist, and shows even more, that 'observership' is a prerequisite for any useful version of 'reality.”

John Archibald Wheeler (1911–2008) American physicist

As quoted by Paul Davies, Other Worlds (1980)

Life, History, Reality, Sense

“Mathematics, too, is a language, and as concerns its structure and content it is the most perfect language which exists, superior to any vernacular; indeed, since it is understood by every people, mathematics may be called the language of languages. Through it, as it were, nature herself speaks; through it the Creator of the world has spoken, and through it the Preserver of the world continues to speak.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 5.

People, World, Mathematics, Nature

“I believe as long as we allow conditions to exist that make for second-class citizens, we are making of ourselves less than first-class citizens.”

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

1950s, Remarks at the United Negro College Fund luncheon (1953)

“Once launched into some activity, conceiving of himself as an instrument of God’s will, the ascetic did not stop to ask about the meaning of it all. On the contrary, the more furious his activity, the more the problem of what his activity meant receded from his mind. … To meet the demands of the day was as near as one could come to doing the pious thing, in this—God’s—world. To trouble about meaning was really an impiety and, of course, frivolous, because futile. For the question of meaning, therefore, neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic type feels responsible, if his spiritual discipline has been successful. The recently fashionable religious talk of “ultimate concern” makes no sense either in the ascetic or in the therapeutic mode. To try to relate “ultimate concern” to everyday behavior would be exhausting and nerve-shattering work; indeed, it could effectively inhibit less grandiose kinds of work. Neither the ascetic nor the therapeutic bothers his head about “ultimate concern.” Such a concern is for mystics who cannot otherwise enjoy their leisure. In the workaday world, there are no ultimate concerns, only present ones. Therapy is the respite of every day, during which the importance of the present is learned, and the existence of what in the ascetic tradition came to be called the “ultimate” or “divine” is unlearned.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

God, World, Behavior, Feeling

“While man regards his body as a harp of pleasure to be played upon so long as its strings can be made to vibrate, so long will he continue to travel down the hill of physical decadence and degeneration in spite of quarantine laws and the most minute sanitary regulations. But when he recognizes his divine origin and obligations, and himself as the crowning masterpiece of creation, his body a precious thing, to be sacredly preserved, developed, expanded, and purified for service for humanity in this world, and a never-ending opportunity for development and joyous existence in the world to come, then only will he begin to climb toward the heights from which he has fallen, where he may once more stand forth as the crowning glory of creation, the masterpiece of God, “the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.””

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, pp. 431-432

God, Pleasure, World, Law

“Every religion claims to believe as they do because of reason, education, or intelligence given by their god in revelation. But whether they admit it or not, all of them are assuming their preferred conclusions on faith, and this would still be true even if all of their gods exist. Believe as hard as you want to. But convincing yourself however firmly still can’t change the reality of things. Seeing is believing. But seeing isn’t knowing. Believing isn’t knowing. Subjective convictions are meaningless in science, and eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"4th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80nhqGfN6t8, Youtube (December 25, 2007) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God, Education, Faith, Religion

“The market does not exist in the pure state. It is shaped by the cultural configurations which define it and give it direction.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

“It is by the straight line and the circle that the first and most simple example and representation of all things may be demonstrated, whether such things be either non-existent or merely hidden under Nature's veils.”

John Dee (1527–1608) English mathematican, astrologer and antiquary

Theorem I
Monas Hieroglyphica (1564)

Nature

“Of course I doubt [the existence of God], I would distrust anybody who didn't doubt. But I'm a believer. I have an understanding and belief in the divinity of things. It seems to me that people look at God in the wrong way. They think that God is there to serve them, but it's the other way around. God isn't some kind of cosmic bell-boy to be called upon to sort things out for us. It's important for us to realise that God has given us the potential to sort things out on our own.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Observer (May, 1998)
God and religion

God, People, Way, Boy

“when a class of men is publicly depressed and harassed (as under Muslim rule)… it merely contents itself with dragging on an animal existence. The Hindus could not be expected to produce the utmost of what they were capable… Amidst such social conditions, the human hand and the human mind cannot achieve their best; the human soul cannot soar to its highest pitch.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Sarkar, A Short History of Aurangzeb, p.153. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3

Men, Soul, Animals