Quotes about existence (7346 quotes, page 67)

“There is a certain force, less primary than being but more primary than the soul, which draws its existence from being and completes the soul as the sun completes the eyes.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

VIII. On Mind and Soul, and that the latter is immortal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: There is a certain force, less primary than being but more primary than the soul, which draws its existence from being and completes the soul as the sun completes the eyes. Of souls some are rational and immortal, some irrational and mortal. The former are derived from the first Gods, the latter from the secondary.

Soul , Sun , Drawing

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

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

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

God , Light , Evil

“If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its place, the new matter must come either from something that is or from something that is not. If from that-which-is, as long as that-which-is always remains, matter always remains. But if that-which-is is destroyed, such a theory means that not the world only but everything in the universe is destroyed.
If again matter comes from that-which-is-not: in the first place, it is impossible for anything to come from that which is not; but suppose it to happen, and that matter did arise from that which is not; then, as long as there are things which are not, matter will exist. For I presume there can never be an end of things which are not.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

World , Universe

“Sometimes people ask me who are the future leaders of Iran… I say I don't know who they are, but I know that they exist by the thousands. They are the artists and engineers; they are poets and businessmen; they are entrepreneurs and they are there -- waiting to inherit this future… And it is, by God, our obligation, our duty to the nation, to help them the best way possible to minimize the toll and the cost of change.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Peter Godspeed, 'It is my duty' http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=462&page=2, Canada National Post, September 24, 2010.
Interviews, 2010

God , People , Way , Change

“If evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any God, for all god is good.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XII. The origin of evil things; and that there is no positive evil.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: If evil exists it must exist either in Gods or minds or souls or bodies. It does not exist in any God, for all god is good. If anyone speaks of a "bad mind" he means a mind without mind. If of a bad soul, he will make the soul inferior to body, for no body in itself is evil. If he says that evil is made up of soul and body together, it is absurd that separately they should not be evil, but joined should create evil.

God , Soul , Evil

“The essences of the Gods never came into existence (for that which always is never comes into existence; and that exists for ever which possesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing): neither do they consist of bodies; for even in bodies the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they contained by space; for that is a property of bodies. Neither are they separate from the first cause nor from one another, just as thoughts are not separate from mind nor acts of knowledge from the soul.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

II. That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal, incorporeal, and not in space.
Variant translation:
The essences of the gods are neither generated; for eternal natures are without generation; and those beings are eternal who possess a first power, and are naturally void of passivity. Nor are their essences composed from bodies; for even the powers of bodies are incorporeal: nor are they comprehended in place; for this is the property of bodies: nor are they separated from the first cause, or from each other; in the same manner as intellections are not separated from intellect, nor sciences from the soul.
II. That a God is immutable, without Generation, eternal, incorporeal, and has no Subsistence in Place, as translated by Thomas Taylor
On the Gods and the Cosmos

God , Soul , Nature , Knowledge

“Now the myths represent the Gods themselves and the goodness of the Gods — subject always to the distinction of the speakable and the unspeakable, the revealed and the unrevealed, that which is clear and that which is hidden: since, just as the Gods have made the goods of sense common to all, but those of intellect only to the wise, so the myths state the existence of Gods to all, but who and what they are only to those who can understand.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

III. Concerning myths; that they are divine, and why.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

God , Understanding , Sense

“One exists in eternity, one has become eternal … One is then apart from the moving image; one exists in the completion of eternity. ”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

“Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time. z Free Inquiry, jar 1982”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

God , Time

“Unlike the Body & Mind, Our Spirit is ONLY restricted by the restrictions it puts on itself. In Our Spirit impossible does not need to exist. ”

Натаниэль Бузолич (1983) Australian actor

“Never look back on something bad, yesterday is gone, today is now, tomorrow doesn't exist.”

Shannon Leto (1970) American musician and songwriter

“Even if I do't have her now, I'll never be alone again, because she exists somewhere”

Marc Levy (1961) French writer

“Sometimes I wonder if it does exist such a thing called personality.”

Giovanni Morassutti (1980) Italian actor, theatre director and cultural entrepreneur.

From the official website

Personality

“Multi-culture is the real culture of the world – the pure race doesn’t exist.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

World

“Human as an intellectual being needs answers about the existence for the purpose of knowing the way to live.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

"Humanity", Ch.II "Ideologies: A way to live", Part I

Way

“Human ideologies are based on human believe and acceptance of one ideology by all human is not possible as long as each human could find answers about his existence by his own mind.”

Zaman Ali (1993) Pakistani philosopher

"Humanity", Ch.II "Ideologies: A way to live", Part I

“I am at a place in my life where peace is my priority and negativity cannot exist.”

Ralph Smart

Peace , Life

“Become conscious of your words. Only speak what you want into existence.”

Ralph Smart

“If money didn’t exist, would you still get up every morning and do what you do for a living?”

Ralph Smart

Money

“The ultimate truth in this universe is the truth of oneness. Therefore each being in existence is in fact an extension of what many call "God". We are indivisible from it. And as such, having good relationships with people is the same as having a good relationship with God.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Universe , Truth , God , People

“You don’t listen to the science because you are only interested in solutions that will enable you to carry on like before. Like now. And those answers don’t exist any more. Because you did not act in time.”

Greta Thunberg book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

"You did not act in time": Greta Thunberg's full speech to UK MPs https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/23/greta-thunberg-full-speech-to-mps-you-did-not-act-in-time (23 April 2019)
Cited in No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Penguin Books, 2019, pages 58 and 67 (ISBN 9780141991740).
2019, "You did not act in time" (April 2019)

Science , Time

“Fascism replaces, therefore, the old atomistic and mechanical state theory that was at the basis of the liberal and democratic doctrines with an organic and historic concept… The important thing is to ascertain that this organic concept of the state gives to society a continuous life over and beyond the existence of the several individuals.”

Alfredo Rocco (1875–1935) Italian politician and jurist

Source: The Political Doctrine of Fascism (1925), p. 111

Life

“We have been raised in a primitive society that thinks of destiny in these terms: What SHOULD I do with my life? It is time that we graduate to higher understanding. The higher understanding is that "should" is not a concept which exists within this universe. Your destiny is instead encoded in these words: What do I WANT to do with my life? What fills me with PASSION? What causes me to feel JOY? Answer these questions for yourself and you've started on the path of your destiny.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

instagram

Time , Understanding , Question , Universe

“The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Original: (de) Die tiefsten Probleme des modernen Lebens quellen aus dem Anspruch des Individuums, die Selbständigkeit und Eigenart seines Daseins gegen die Übermächte der Gesellschaft, des geschichtlich Ererbten, der äußerlichen Kultur und Technik des Lebens zu bewahren - die letzterreichte Umgestaltung des Kampfes mit der Natur, den der primitive Mensch um seine leibliche Existenz zu führen hat.
Source: The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903), p. 409

Fight , Problem , Life , Nature

“Part of this book is an homage to the way my friends and I live: lives without children, without marriage, lives you rarely see depicted in popular art, unless as a punch line or a tragedy, lives not considered by many to be full, legitimate adulthood. And yet when I was growing up, my parents always had a diversity of friends, some of whom lived different kinds of lives themselves…And they had many friends who had chosen this other path of adulthood, who weren’t married, who didn’t have children, whose lives didn’t resemble their own. So this sort of life never seemed like anything less-than to me. The loneliness of living the life I do comes from the fact that so many people do think it’s a lesser existence, a purgatory of true adulthood.”

Hanya Yanagihara (1974) American novelist and travel writer

On depicting adulthood in A Little Life in “An Interview with Hanya Yanagihara” https://believermag.com/an-interview-with-hanya-yanagihara/ in Believer Magazine (2017 Nov 20)

Marriage , Adulthood , Children , Loneliness

“Labor is a social process. Each enterprise is part of the productive body of society. The total social production is formed by their connection and collaboration. Like the cells that constitute a living organism, they cannot exist isolated and cut off from the body. So the organization of the work inside the shop is only one-half of the task of the workers. Over it, a still more important task, stands the joining of the separate enterprises, their combination into a social organization.”

Antonie Pannekoek (1873–1960) Dutch astronomer and Marxist theorist

Section 1.1
Workers Councils (1947)

Parting

“Let us turn passing events to our own advantage. Out of conditions as they exist let us carve out fortunes and realize our ambitions. In the beginning nature made man a contending animal. Are we not all Greeks or Trojans? We must therefore make up our minds for a life of continual battle, we must fight, I say, morning, noon and night, if need be against an entire world.”

Arthur Desmond (1859–1929) New Zealnd writer

Rival Caesars (1903)

Night , Nature , Animals , World

“How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed. Rights are not things which grow by using the multiplication table. here are two men. If there are such things as rights, these two men must evidently start with equal rights. How shall you, then, by multiplying one of the two, even a thousand times over, give him larger rights than the other, since each new unit that appears only brings with him his own rights; or how, by multiplying one of the units up to the point of exhausting the powers of the said multiplication table, shall you take from the other the rights with which he started?”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

The Contemporary Review

Time , Appearance , Way , Making love

“Our ultimate aim is to bring about the existence of a state of society in which all persons who for one reason or another have lost the capacity for work, all those who are unable to work, shall have assured support. We must ensure that old people shall enjoy a peaceful old age in which they will be provided with all the comforts of life; that children shall have everything suitable to their requirements; that invalids and cripples shall be able to live in the circumstances most appropriate to their condition; that those who are wearied and overworked shall be placed in curative surroundings, where they will receive all the care that used to be given to the wealthy bourgeois who were ailing; that no one shall any longer be perpetually harassed with anticipation of hard times.”

Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) Soviet politician

131
ABC's of Communism

Peace , Time , Support , Personality

“Throughout the whole range of Urdu literature in its first phase… the atmosphere of this literature is provokingly un-Indian - it is that of Persia. Early Urdu poets never so much as mention the great physical features of India - its Himalayas, its rivers like the Ganges, the Jamuna, the Sindhu, the Godavari, etc; but of course mountains and streams of Persia, and rivers of Central Asia are always there. Indian flowers, Indian plants are unknown; only Persian flowers and plants which the poet could see only in a garden. There was a deliberate shutting of the eye to everything Indian, to everything not mentioned or treated in Persian poetry… A language and literature which came to base itself upon an ideology which denied on the Indian soil the very existence of India and Indian culture, could not but be met with a challenge from some of the Indian adherents of their national culture; and that challenge was in the form of highly Sanskritized Hindi’.”

Suniti Kumar Chatterji (1890–1977) Bengali linguist

S.K. Chatterjee quoted in Aziz Ahmad, Studies In Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, Oxford. 1964, pp. 252-55. https://archive.org/details/StudiesInIslamicCultureInTheIndianE

Mountain , Flowers , Literature

“For a long time past scarce any trace of them (Buddhists) has existed in Hindustan.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.46757/2015.46757.Ain-I-Akbari--Vol-3#page/n225/mode/1up, Vol. III, translated by H.S. Jarett, p. 212
Also in [The First Spring: The Golden Age of India] by Abraham Eraly, p. 787 https://books.google.com/books?id=te1sqTzTxD8C&pg=PA787; Guru Nanak, his life, time, and teachings: Guru Nanak Foundation quincentenary volume by Gurmukh Nihal Singh, p. 126; The History and Culture of the Indian People: The struggle for empire by R. C. Majumdar, p. 426

Past , Time

“It is true that my conclusions and views on certain issues are based on my knowledge existing prior to the submission of ASI’s report in court. I and Prof. Habib had given this statement that remains of old mosque or Eidgah had been found beneath the disputed site and not of any temple.If this propaganda that remains of temple were found at the disputed site, had not taken place, there would have been no occasion for me and Prof. Irfan Habib to give the above statement.”

Suraj Bhan (archaeologist) (1931–2010) Indian archaeologist

Justice Aggarwal, Para 3826
Quotes from the Judgment from Honorable Justice Agarwal, 2010

Knowledge

“Although I quote less than two hundred incidents, these have been selected from nearly two thousand cuttings, reports, articles, manuscripts and ancient documents supplied to me by kind helpers from many countries... For the past eighteen months barely a single day has gone by without flying saucers being reported somewhere in the world... On some days there have been as many as ten different sightings in different places. And if a thing is seen daily, week after week, month after month, by ordinary people in free countries, then it follows that the thing in question must surely exist.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Flying Saucers Have Landed

Country , Question , Past , People

“Even in terms of the beginning stage of the career, obstacles are something that you get so used to. The uncertainty of your life. You’ll always exist in a weird balance because you’re going for a career that’s somewhat unrealistic and not all success. There’s always challenges and you’ve gotta get through it or you’re beaten by it. It creates this kind of discipline, in a sense.”

John Boyega (1992) British Nigerian actor

On being an actor in “John Boyega, Star Wars Hero, Stays Up Too Late Watching The Affair” https://www.wmagazine.com/story/john-boyega-star-wars-moncler-favorite-tv-music in W Magazine (2018 Jul 12)

Sense , Life , Success

“In dealing with an opponent who has openly repudiated all the restraints, both of law and of humanity, we are not going to allow our efforts to be strangled in a network of juridical niceties. We do not intend to put into operation any measures which we do not think to be effective, and I need not say we shall carefully avoid any measures which violate the rules either of humanity or of honesty. Subject to those two conditions I say to our enemy—I say it on behalf of the Government, and I hope on behalf of the House of Commons—that under existing conditions there is no form of economic pressure to which we do not consider ourselves entitled to resort.”

H. H. Asquith (1852–1928) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1915/mar/01/success-of-allies-assured#column_600 in the House of Commons (1 March 1915)
Prime Minister

Housing , Law , Hope , Thinking

“I should fear that the new Poland would suffer from the diseases through which the old Poland perished; that it would be a theatre of perpetual intrigues between Germany and Russia; and that its existence, so far from promoting the cause of European peace, would be a perpetual occasion of European strife.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Memorandum, 'The Peace Settlement in Europe' (November 1916), quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 325
First Lord of the Admiralty

Peace , Fear , Suffering , Disease

“Christianity regarded all earthly existence as transient, while the Nazi thought in terms of rendering life eternal through a sort of biological Great Chain of Being. The individual was nothing, but the racial collective would endure through the aeons.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p. 256

Life

“England without an Empire! Can you conceive it? England in that case would not be the England we love. (Cheers.) If the ties of sympathy...between ourselves and our children who are soon to become great nations across the seas—if these ties were weakened or destroyed, if we suffered their affection to die from want of food, if we allowed them to drift apart—then this England of ours would sink from the comparative position which she has enjoyed throughout the centuries...she would be a fifth-rate nation existing on the sufferance of her more powerful neighbours.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Birmingham (9 July 1906), quoted in The Times (10 July 1906), p. 11
1900s

Food , Making love , Children , Suffering

“Let us recollect, that, under the constitution which we have derived from our ancestors, we have enjoyed more liberty, we have acquired more glory, we possess more character and power, than has hitherto fallen to the lot of any other country on the globe; and if there be any man yet undecided on this question, I entreat him that he will give the benefit of his doubt to the existing order of things,—and, that, before he gives his vote to a measure, of the consequences of which he is at least uncertain, he will weigh the substantial blessings which he knows to have been derived from the government that is, against all the speculative advantages which he is promised from the government that is to be.”

Robert Peel (1788–1850) British Conservative statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1817/may/09/roman-catholic-question#column_422 in the House of Commons (9 May 1817) rejecting Catholic Emancipation
Chief Secretary for Ireland

Question , Country

“A general State education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty (1859), Ch. V: Applications

Education , Nature , People , Success

“Other qualities of bodies are connected with simple energy of motion and energy of position. Such is heat, which we find by experiment can be turned into work. Finding it convertible with energy, we call it a form of energy. ...But as to heat, it is further established by experiment that in this case the energy of motion does really persist as such. Thus a gas consists of molecules flying about with velocity, rotating and vibrating, and so having energy motion. All this energy of motion is what we call heat, and thus heat is a repetition of a known meaning of energy. Again, heat exists between a radiating body and the thing it warms; now the intermediate space is filled by the luminiferous ether, which, being elastic, has in its ultimate parts both energy of motion energy of position. In these forms the heat exists in the space in question.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

"Energy and Force" (Mar 28, 1873)

Question , Parting , Flying

“When a body is let fall from a higher position to lower one, it has, at the instant when it is let go, energy of motion; but it gains, in falling, as much energy of motion as it loses energy of position. It is found that the sum of energy of motion and energy of position is always constant. ...Energy is a quantity which can be greater or less but has no direction. ...This constancy is expressed by including them in common name of Energy, and saying that energy is conserved, or is indestructible. This form of speech might be applied to other cases of alternate immortality, where one of two things comes into existence on disappearance of the other.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

"Energy and Force" (Mar 28, 1873)

“To say that there are certain fields—for example, metaphysics—from which science is excluded, wherein its methods have no application, is merely to say that the rules of methodical observation and the laws of logical thought do not apply to the facts, if any, which lie within such fields. These fields, if indeed such exist, must lie outside any intelligible definition which can be given of the word knowledge.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Law , Intelligence , Knowledge , Lie

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

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

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

Despair , Loss , Beauty , Dreams

“Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of social order.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

The Book of Tea. Kakuzo Okakura, in Green Gold: The Empire of Tea (30 November 2011) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=4SCZJFFf6ZsC&pg=PT64, p. 64.

Beauty

“Since the labor-power could be the labor of four, eight, or even twelve hours, the amount of labor expeneded can be augmented. The value of the labor-power is decided by the consumption goods necessary to maintain the life of the worker, making it possible for that person to exist as a human being who expends the same labor today as yesterday.”

Itsurō Sakisaka (1897–1985) Japanese economist

Exploitation of Labor (1967)

Personality , Life , Making love

“In the case of the exploitation of slave labor, by contrast, things are exceedingly clear. Slaves, who exist as a sort of animal owned by another human being, have no freedom. Like a dog, a slave is unable to exercise any degree of physical or mental freedom.”

Itsurō Sakisaka (1897–1985) Japanese economist

Exploitation of Labor (1967)

Animals , Freedom , Dogs , Exercises

“There is something that even now strikes me as strange. Originally I was not possessed by gloomy thoughts. My concern, what confronted me with my real problem, was beauty alone. But I do not think that the war affected me by filling my mind with gloomy thoughts. When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1959).

War , Beauty , People , Problem

“You must bear in mind how many powerful adversaries we have aroused ever since the formation of our Society... Intrinsically, Theosophy is the most serious movement of this age; and one, moreover, which threatens the very life of most of the time-honoured humbugs, prejudices, and social evils of the day—those evils which fatten and make happy the upper ten and their imitators and sycophants, the wealthy dozens of the middle classes, while they positively crush and starve out of existence the millions of the poor.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Time , Age , Life , Making love

“Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.”

Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) Italian physicist

On the Hydrogen bomb in a minority annex http://web.archive.org/web/20080725010150/honors.umd.edu/HONR269J/archive/GACReport491030.html (co-authored with I. I. Rabi) to an official General Advisory Committee report for the Atomic Energy Commission (30 October 1949)

Country , Light , Nature , Knowledge

“First of all, modern propaganda is based on scientific analyses of psychology and sociology. Step by step, the propagandist builds his techniques on the basis of his knowledge of man, his tendencies, his desires, his needs, his psychic mechanisms, his conditioning — and as much on social psychology as on depth psychology. He shapes his procedures on the basis of our knowledge of groups and their laws of formation and dissolution, of mass influences, and of environmental limitations. Without the scientific research of modern psychology and sociology there would be no propaganda, or rather we still would be in the primitive stages of propaganda that existed in the time of Pericles or Augustus.”

Jacques Ellul book Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

Vintage, p. 4
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)

Knowledge , Time , Law

“If we choose the path of destruction, the planet will continue to descend irreversibly into the Anthropocene Epoch, the biologically final age in which the planet exists almost exclusively by, for, and of ourselves.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (2016)

Age

“The single merit I can claim at this junction is that I am not seeking to obtain agreement. I am seeking only to outline the reality that exists, not to win support, start a movement, or contrive concurrence. The reason is clear. It can’t be done. Additionally I do not know everything. Therefore, I can be wrong. What evil I could impose if I obtain agreement on a point that happened to be in error! I do not intend to be wrong, but the mind and the memory are both fallible. So I propose to set down what is so, to the degree I am capable of recognizing it.”

Robert LeFevre (1911–1986) American libertarian businessman

Source: A Way to Be Free: The Autobiography of Robert LeFevre, Volume I, (1999), pp. 18-19

Support , Reality , Memory , Error

“Gangs have always existed—they are primarily a community a young men trying to find intensity, meaning, a path to the outer world (outside of home) that most tribal groupings addressed with rituals, rites of passage, initiation ceremonies. We’ve lost this knowledge as a culture. Gangs also exist when there are lots of empties in a person, in family, in community. It points out how we need to do more to bring real art, passions, teachings, caring, and resources into the emptiness of young peoples’ lives…”

Luis J. Rodriguez (1954) pinto poetry, Chicanismo, and Chicano literature

On how gangs might be viewed in “An Interview with Luis J. Rodriguez” https://www.epl.org/an-interview-with-luis-j-rodriguez-2/ (Evanston Public Library; 2011)

Home , Family , Personality , People

“In connection with the matter of command in the field, there is perhaps a popular misconception that the Army and the Navy were intermingled in a standard form of joint operational organization in every theater throughout the world. Actually, the situation was never the same in any two areas. For example, after General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower had completed his landing in Normandy, his operation became purely a land campaign. The Navy was responsible for maintaining the line of communications across the ocean and for certain supply operations in the ports of Europe, and small naval groups became part of the land army for certain special purposes, such as the boat groups which helped in the crossing of the Rhine. But the strategy and tactics of the great battles leading up to the surrender of Germany were primarily army affairs and no naval officer had anything directly to do with the command of this land campaign. A different situation existed in the Pacific, where, in the process of capturing small atolls, the fighting was almost entirely within range of naval gunfire; that is to say, the whole operation of capturing an atoll was amphibious in nature, with artillery and air-support primarily naval. This situation called for a mixed Army-Navy organization which was entrusted to the command of Fleet Admiral Nimitz. A still different situation existed in the early days of the war during the Solomon Islands campaign where Army and Navy became, of necessity, so thoroughly intermingled that they were, to all practical purposes, a single service directed by Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. Under General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Army, Army Aviation, and the naval components of his command were separate entities tied together only at the top in the person of General MacArthur himself. In the Mediterranean the scheme of command differed somewhat from all the others.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

Third Report, p. 172
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

War , Support , Personality , Help

“Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.”

Thomas Merton book The Seven Storey Mountain

Source: The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), p. 91

Hurt , Pain , Understanding , People

“Whenever the mind thinks of anything, it also invokes its corresponding form. The form has an essential sound or name attached to it. In fact, according to these seers, all phenomenal existence is nama-rupa, names and forms. Of these two, names are even more important than forms. An object is merely an outer expression, a material representation of the more internal and essential nama.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

The World As Revelation: Names of Gods (1980)

Thinking

“And then, a little Jew, with a long nose and a pale complexion, Poor but satisfied, pensive and reserved, A subtle but hollow spirit, less read than celebrated, Hidden under the mantle of Descartes, his mentor, Walking with measured steps, comes close to the great being: Excuse me, he says, addressing him in a whisper, But I think, just between us, that you do not exist at all.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Voltaire's poem, as quoted in António Damásio's Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2003)
S - Z

Thinking , Reading

“During the last six years the United States Army has not only matured greatly, but its officers have grown vastly more aware of their world-wide responsibilities as military men. Allied command has become the accepted pattern of military operation, and many of the insular differences that once caused us to question the motives of our allies have now been completely resolved. If we will only remember that from time to time some difficulties do exist, we shall be better prepared to settle them without exaggerating their dangers.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. x-xi

Time , Question , World , Motivation

“The Brotherhood of great seers and sages, united in a common purpose and governed by common ideals and esoteric knowledge, has existed as an association of high adepts under the direct inspiration and guidance of their hierarch, or mahaguru, for many millions of years — certainly for not less than twelve million; in other words, since the appearance on earth of the root-race which preceded our own present fifth root-race.”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 22

Knowledge , Appearance

“Probably there is no single doctrine of the Esoteric Tradition which makes so instant an appeal as does the idea of the present existence in the world of great sages or seers. In most minds there lies an intuition that there must be in the world human beings of far loftier spiritual capacity and of immensely more developed intellectual power than the ordinary run of men. Those who hear of this for the first time instantly turn to those luminous figures, such as Gautama the Buddha, Jesus the Syrian avatara, Apollonius of Tyana, Lao-Tse, Krishna, Sankaracharya, etc. and, among many, the first reaction is: if such great figures have already existed in the world, why should they not exist again?”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Source: The Esoteric Tradition (1935), Chapter 19

Time , World , Idea , Making love

“A star is drawing on some vast reservoir of energy by means unknown to us. This reservoir can scarcely be other than the sub-atomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn to release it and use it for his service. The store is well-nigh inexhaustible, if only it could be tapped.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

The Internal Constitution of Stars (1926)

Drawing , Dreams , Learning , Star

“I think the biggest challenge for people is to understand still that we are result of 500 years of enslavement. And that the process of education has been one to erase us. And it can erase you intellectually and convince you that you don’t exist. So it doesn’t matter the color you are phenotypically, you don’t see yourself. And the challenge is for us to see ourselves as rooted in one experience…”

Marta Moreno Vega (1942) Author, professor, arts administrator, expert in Yoruba culture, education and cultural activist on the African …

On the challenges facing a diaspora community in “The boundaries of how we think of the Global African Diaspora: AN INTERVIEW WITH Dr. Marta Moreno Vega” https://africasacountry.com/2018/04/the-boundaries-of-how-we-think-of-the-global-african-diaspora in Africa is a County (2018 Apr 5)

Understanding , People , Thinking , Color

“That this play is the first play by an Asian American at our existence, is proof of the great success white racism has had with us. America might love us. But America’s love is not good. It’s racist love. I don’t want it.”

Frank Chin (1940) American writer

On his play The Chickencoop Chinaman (as quoted in the book Notable Asian Americans http://smithsonianapa.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2009/10/chin-frank.pdf)

Love , Making love , Success

“Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.”

Noah Levine (1971) American Buddhist teacher

Against the Stream (2007)

Way , Suffering

“Dreadful is Armageddon — the dark forces are struggling for their very existence. Despair unites them and makes them so persistent in trying to achieve their aim. The Prince of the World has very many talented collaborators—some conscious, some unconscious—and it is foolish to think that they do not know the ways of the most cunning subtlety. There are very shrewd and inventive, and they act according to the level of their victims. But all of them lack tolerance and warmth of heart.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

23 August 1934
Armageddon

Despair , Heart , Thinking , Way

“The goal and the meaning of existence is to strive upward beyond the limits of the known, and to help one another.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

160
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book Two: Illumination (1925)

Help

“Living on the hyphen is a complex cultural existence at times, and we’re often pulled in many directions where allegiance is always demanded. It is a fractured state of being, though I don’t think it’s necessarily bad; at least the having multiple ways of looking at life-the Mexican and American/the male and female. Where that goes awry is when we want to make one way of approaching life, The One Way. That’s where things begin to disintegrate, loyalties are questioned, and patriarchies are born…”

Isabel Quintero

On the Mexican American experience in “2015 Morris Award: An Interview with Finalist Isabel Quintero” http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2015/01/26/morris-award-finalist-interview-isabel-quintero/ in YALSA (2015 Jan 26)

Life , Time , Question , Bad luck

“This negation of our existence, and the omitting of our stories and histories, is one of the reasons I write — I write to exist. We cannot escape our past; our past determines what choices we make for the future. It determines how we act, how we see ourselves…”

Isabel Quintero

On the absence of people of color in her school curriculums in “‘My Writing is My Activism’: An Interview with Isabel Quintero” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/my-writing-is-my-activism-an-interview-with-isabel-quintero/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2017 Feb 1)

Past , Future , Making love , History

“The ambiguity when the performance of self becomes self-destructive, or when performance of self becomes pathological. That gray area interests me as a poet because it’s so wrapped up in everyday life now that it’s almost mundane. So much of this performance is tied to feelings of worth and value; in essence, it becomes ongoing, an entire existence all on its own…”

Sally Wen Mao Chinese-born American poet

On the “self” as a spectacle in “Jenny Xie Interviews Sally Wen Mao” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2019/01/jenny-xie-interviews-sally-wen-mao (Poetry Foundation; Jan 2019)

Self-confidence , Life , Feeling

“Arundhati Roy risked the international fame she so clearly cherishes by going public with blatant lies about atrocities against named Gujarati Muslim women who turned out to be either non-existent or abroad at the time of the riots. Perhaps a fiction writer can afford this, but the news media with their deontology of accuracy and objectivity made themselves guilty of similar howlers.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

[Elst, Koenraad, Rao, Prof. Ramesh N., Gujarat after Godhra: real violence, selective outrage, 2003, Har Anand Publications, https://books.google.co.in/books?id=GuJtAAAAMAAJ, With]

Time , Women

“Because of anti-blackness in the United States and Latin America, most of us are either hyper-visible or invisible, or both simultaneously. So many people I’ve had conversations with don’t even know that Latinxs are not a race or that black people exist in Puerto Rico (and throughout all of Latin America) and that we don’t all look exactly the same. As a light-skinned black Boricua, I’m often read as racially ambiguous, and because of colorism, I benefit from my proximity to whiteness. I think it’s our responsibility (those of us who benefit from light-skinned privilege or racial ambiguity or whiteness) to have a reckoning with race, to do the work to actively address institutional racism, as well as racism and colorism in our everyday lives, not just in the public eye. Otherwise, we are complicit.”

Jaquira Díaz Puerto Rican writer

On racism and being lighter-skinned in “‘Either Hyper-Visible or Invisible’: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/either-hyper-visible-or-invisible-an-interview-with-jaquira-diaz/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Oct 29)

Reading , Light , People , Thinking

“He was only ten. It seemed to him that he could see them, the two of them, shadowy in the limbo from which time emerged and became time: the old bear absolved of mortality and himself who shared a little of it. Because he recognised now what he had smelled in the huddled dogs and tasted in his own saliva, recognised fear as a boy, a youth recognises the existence of love and passion and experience which is his heritage but not yet his patrimony, from entering by chance the presence of perhaps even merely the bedroom of a woman who has loved and been loved by many men.”

William Faulkner book Go Down, Moses

The Bear section 1 (p. 195)
Go Down, Moses (1942)

Chance , Time , Dogs , Boy

“The hardest thing these days is to make something that’s beautiful; it’s easy to make ugly art. I think it takes a lot more talent to make something beautiful. Beauty to me is when you show something to someone that they’ve never seen before. That’s what a great work of art does; it shows you something that you didn’t know existed.”

Gronk (artist) (1954) American artist

On making beautiful artwork in “Gronk by Marisela Norte” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/gronk/ in BOMB Magazine (2007 Jan 1)

Beauty , Thinking , Making love , Art

“BERISH: I distrust miracles. They exist only in books, and books say anything.”

Elie Wiesel The Trial of God

Act I (p. 40)
The Trial of God (1979)

Books

“Some writers want to write something that doesn’t exist within a time, but I’m not interested in that. I want to capture particular moments in time…I’ve always seen my writing as an attempt to document and be specific in that documentation.”

Morgan Parker (writer) American poet

On her poetry not existing in a vacuum in “You Are on Display: An Interview with Morgan Parker” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/22/you-are-on-display-an-interview-with-morgan-parker/ in The Paris Review (2016 Jul 22)

Time

“In obedience to the commandment of the Almighty God, the Lord of both the worlds; and in love of… the exalted Prophet: During the reign of Shãhjahãn, the king of the seven climes, the viceregent of God (lit. Truth), the master of the necks of people… the benevolent and generous Prince Aurangzeb, whose existence is a blessing of the Merciful God on people: He built a house for worship with (all) the qualities of heaven: after the site has been previously occupied by the temple of infidels…”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Inscription on Mosque at Bodhan, Andhra Pradesh, Epigraphia Indo-Moslemica, 1919-1920 quoted from Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R. (1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. Vol. II.
Quotes from late medieval histories

God , Housing , People , Truth

“To be sure, the other America is not impoverished in the same sense as those poor nations where millions cling to hunger as a defense against starvation. This country has escaped such extremes. That does not change the fact that tens of millions of Americans are, at this very moment, maimed in body and spirit, existing at levels beneath those necessary for human decency. If these people are not starving, they are hungry, and sometimes far with hunger, for that is what cheap foods do. They are without adequate housing and education and medical care.”

Michael Harrington book The Other America

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 1, sct. 1

Hunger , Housing , Food , Country

“We wish, in a word, to fulfill the intentions of nature and the destiny of man, realize the promises of philosophy, and acquit providence of a long reign of crime and tyranny. That France, once illustrious among enslaved nations, may, by eclipsing the glory of all free countries that ever existed, become a model to nations, a terror to oppressors, a consolation to the oppressed, an ornament of the universe and that, by sealing the work with our blood, we may at least witness the dawn of the bright day of universal happiness. This is our ambition, - this is the end of our efforts....”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

Universe , Nature , Effort , Country

“But there do exist, I can assure you, souls that are feeling and pure; it exists, that tender, imperious and irresistible passion, the torment and delight of magnanimous hearts; that deep horror of tyranny, that compassionate zeal for the oppressed, that sacred love for the homeland, that even more sublime and holy love for humanity, without which a great revolution is just a noisy crime that destroys another crime; it does exist, that generous ambition to establish here on earth the world’s first Republic.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

Speech of Thermidor Year II (26 July 1794)

Soul , Heart , Passion , World

“Is your own existence so replete with equanimity you find no outlet for worry except on behalf of others?”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Look to Windward (2000), Chapter 3 “Infra Dawn” (p. 67)

“As an American, I always want to create work that reminds the world that people of colour have been great contributors to American history, culture, and tradition and that our stories exist and matter.”

Nilaja Sun

On her aim in “Interview with Nilaja Sun” https://www.voicemag.uk/interview/2818/interview-with-nilaja-sun (2017 Aug 6)

World , People , History

“I’m not a poet, but I do like heightened language that can exist in the theatre. Many plays are sounding more naturalistic these days, more like TV. I still take my cues from Shakespeare. I would rather have the story exist more in the audience’s heads than on a screen.”

Octavio Solis (1958)

On avoiding the label of magical realism in “Octavio Solis’s Journey to ‘Mother Road’” https://www.americantheatre.org/2019/09/09/octavio-soliss-journey-to-mother-road/ (American Theatre; Sept 2019)

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

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

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

Feeling , Thinking , Loneliness , People

“The dictionary doesn’t have individual contributions. It’s like building a cathedral. The workers are unknown. But one of the things I tend to do is suggest that it might be interesting to have examples of things that aren’t from France. If it’s a wind, which we worked on recently, does it always have to be the mistral? What about the winds of elsewhere? How about zephyrs or siroccos? In French, there exists an enormous variety of classifications, proverbs, and witticisms about winds. There are winds that push ships as well as winds that come from the gut—the noisy, bodily winds of Rabelais. All shadings have to be in the dictionary.”

Dany Laferrière (1953) Haitian Canadian novelist and journalist

On working on a French-language dictionary as part his duties at the Académie française in “Dany Laferrière, The Art of Fiction No. 237” https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/7040/dany-laferriere-the-art-of-fiction-no-237-dany-laferriere in The Paris Review (Fall 2017)

Relation ships

“Another problem with our media, intellectuals, elites and posh class is that they are always negative. Desperate. Insecure. All signs of a weak institution. They are scared that if the hungry masses get empowered, they will destroy their empires built on the blood and sweat of the same people. That’s why they constantly try to keep the masses deprived, and their very existence in fear. They never let the masses forget who is Superior and who is Inferior.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Forgetting , Fear , People , Problem

“Their strategy was simple. Moral domination. Nehru was a thinker. But Rajiv, Sonia, and Rahul are no intellectuals. They took a different route. They redefined morality. Secularism included. Anti-Congress was new immoral. Pro-Hindu became anti-Muslim. India was morally polarized. Morality is subjective. No one can say with guarantee what is pure morality. Masses were forced to choose between moral standards (Secularism, unity in diversity, inclusive etc.) and quality of life (development). People who wanted quality of life were made to feel guilty. Hindus who wanted to celebrate their religious freedom were made to feel guilty. Muslims who wanted to be part of mainstream India were made to feel guilty. They filled India’s psyche with fear, hate and guilt. They hated all indigenous, grassroots thinkers. They hated Sardar Patel, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Morarji Desai, Charan Singh, Chandrashekhar, P.V. Narsimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and now Modi. They are the land grabbers of Sainik Farms and Adarsh Societies of India. They run NGOs. They run media. They coin useless and irrelevant jargon to confuse the masses. They have designations but no real jobs. They are irrelevant NRIs who want us to see a reality which doesn’t exist. They want a plebiscite in Kashmir. They defend stone-pelters. They want Maoists to participate in mainstream politics. They want Tejpal to be freed. Yaqub to be pardoned. But they want Modi to be hanged. They are the hijackers of national morality. Secularism included. They are the robbers of Indian treasury. They are the brokers of power. They are the pimps of secularism. They are the Intellectual Mafia.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Life , Hate , Freedom , People

“Translation from Bulgarian: Someone said that human harmony is achieved when the body and the soul are at the same place. For me, this situation has not existed since I can remember. I am more of a polyphonic person: I live in several dimensions and I like it.”

Lea Cohen (1942)

Някой беше казал, че хармонията на човека се постига, когато душата и тялото са на едно място. За мен такава ситуация не съществува откак се помня. Май съм повече полифонична личност: живея в няколко измерения и това ми харесва.
Interview with Lea Cohen, Mila, June 2019

Personality , Soul

“The oneness of God’s Creativity is to affirm and recognise that God is the sole creator, master and owner of everything that exists. God is the One who sustains, takes care of, and nourishes everything. According to the Islamic doctrine of tawheed, anyone who denies this has associated partners with God, which is polytheism (known as shirk in Islamic theology). Anyone who believes that these descriptions of God can be shared by any created thing has deified that thing. Therefore, they have associated partners with God.”

Hamza Tzortzis (1980) public speaker

"7 REASONS WHY GOD IS WORTHY OF WORSHIP" https://www.hamzatzortzis.com/7-reasons-why-god-is-worthy-of-worship/, Hamzatzortzis.com

God

“Now let us regard the idea of God from the magic standpoint, according to the four elements,the so-called tetragrammaton, the unspeakable, the supreme: the fiery principle involves the almightiness and the omnipotence, the airy principle owns the wisdom, purity and clarity, from which aspect proceeds the universal lawfulness. Love and eternal life are attributed to the watery principle, and omnipresence, immortality and consequently eternity belong to the earth principle. These four aspects together represent the supreme Godhead. Let us tread upon this path to this supreme Godhead practically and step by step, beginning from the lowest sphere, to arrive at the true realization of God in ourselves. Let us praise the happy man who will reach this still in his earthly existence. Us banish fear of the pains, for all of us will reach this goal.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 28

Life , God , Pain , Law

“God ~Since the remotest times, Mankind has always believed in something beyond human understanding, something transcendental that he idolized no matter whether there was question of personified or unpersonified conceptions of God. Anything man was unable to understand or to comprehend was imputed to the powers above such as his intuitive virtue admitted them. In this way, all the deities of mankind, good and evil ones (demons) have been born. As time went on, gods, angels, demiurges, demons and ghosts have been worshiped irrespective of their ever having been alive in reality or their having existed only in fancy.”

Franz Bardon book Initiation Into Hermetics

Source: Initiation Into Hermetics (1956), p. 27

God , Time , Understanding , Question

“Unquestionably society ought to be so organised as to render self-sacrifice superfluous, for as long as men exist who are ready and willing to make sacrifices, so long will egoists take advantage of these sacrifices.”

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk The Spirit of Russia

The Spirit of Russia
II
1919
Thomas
Garrigue Masaryk
Paul
Eden
Paul
Cedar
15–16

Self-confidence , Making love , Men

“Health is not to be mistaken for mere existence. It is the balance of the body, mind and self... there rests the mind. If the breath scatters, the mind wanders. If mind wanders, the breath scatters. So still the breath to still the mind. Mind is the king.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life (2005), p. 28

Self-confidence , Health

“God has not made with two hearts within him. The incomparable Majesty who has conferred the boon of existence upon thee has placed within thee but one heart, to the end that with single heart thou mayest love Him alone, and mayest turn thy back on all besides and devote thyself to Him alone, and refrain from dividing thy heart into a hundred portions, each portion devoted to a different object.”

Jami (1414–1492) Persian poet

Lawāih, p. 20
Lawāih

God , Love , Heart , Making love

“Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us.... We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee

Time , History , Past , Birth

“I think there’s something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence. It’s impossible to articulate, and it’s happening now, almost like a perverse secret.... That’s always sort of fascinating to me.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

As quoted in "Miranda July Is Totally Not Kidding" by Katrina Onstad, in The New York Times (14 July 2011) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/magazine/the-make-believer.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

Secret , Thinking

“No God created the crime of murder, and no God created sorrow or pain... Again, because you believe that you can murder a man and end his consciousness forever, then murder exists within your reality and must be dealt with... The assassin of Dr. King believes that he has blotted out a living consciousness for all eternity... But your errors and mistakes, luckily enough, are not real and do not affect reality, for Dr. King still lives.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 273

Error , God , Pain , Reality

“The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language. The desire is to have the idea clearly communicated to the other person. It is only necessary to be precise when there is some doubt as to the meaning of a phrase, and then the precision should be put in the place where the doubt exists. It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.Pure mathematics is just such an abstraction from the real world, and pure mathematics does have a special precise language for dealing with its own special and technical subjects. But this precise language is not precise in any sense if you deal with real objects of the world, and it is only pedantic and quite confusing to use it unless there are some special subtleties which have to be carefully distinguished.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

" New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/2362/1/feynman.pdf", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14
Paraphrased as "Precise language is not the problem. Clear language is the problem."

Personality , Communication , Problem , World

“The negationist stand against the pre-existence of the Ayodhya temple was an extreme example of how the Humanities often serve to provide a scholarly veneer to theses that arise purely from political motives.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Ch 19
2010s, On Modi Time (2015)

Motivation

“The existence of that temple had been a matter of consensus among Muslims, Europeans and Hindus, both nationalist and anti-nationalist, until the JNU professors issued their fatwa to disregard the evidence and deny history.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

History

Quotes about existence page 67

Quotes about existence
page 67