Quotes about existence (7346 quotes, page 69)

“It seems obvious that a true realization of the implications of reincarnation (and not simply an intellectual acceptance) will transform the whole Western approach to reality. The idea that life is not short, brutish and arbitrary; that there is purpose and plan; that we are undergoing a process of gradual perfectionment; above all that the great Law of Cause and Effect governs our existence, must change our viewpoint. The need for right human relationships, for harmlessness, will become abundantly clear.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. I (1986), p. 271

Law , Reality , Idea , Life

“It is sadly to be regretted that such a distorted vision of the Christ should so have permeated human consciousness. No such being exists. In order to understand the true nature of the Christ it is necessary to see Him as one among equal Sons of God, each endowed with full divine potential, differing only in the degree of manifestation of that divinity.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

God , Christ , Understanding , Nature

“We do not have even fragments of the teachings of former World Teachers given prior to certain knowledge of Their existence. We do not have the teachings of a Christ, or a Buddha, or a Krishna, except seen through the eyes of later followers. For the first time we are given the flavor of the thoughts and insights of a Being of immeasurable stature to enable us to understand the path of evolution stretching ahead of us which He has come to outline for us. The impression left in the mind by the Teacher is that the breadth and depth of His knowledge and awareness have no limits; that He is tolerant and wise beyond conception, and of amazing humility.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Teachings - The Laws of Life (2005)

Time , Understanding , Teachers , Knowledge

“I grew up being aware that I was Southern, and that being a very important thing for me. And being drawn to short story writers, like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty—the surroundings in their stories were so familiar to me, the whole Southern Gothic thing. That world only existed in that part of the country. It’s going to inform the personality of the songs. In a lot of my songwriting, I mention towns and places. It’s a culturally traditional thing in the South to tell stories.”

Lucinda Williams (1953) American rock, folk, blues, and country music singer, songwriter and musician

On how her Southern heritage informed her songwriting in “Lucinda Williams On the Hard and Sedulous Road to Major Label Success” https://sheshredsmag.com/interview-lucinda-williams/ in She Shreds (2017 Mar 6)

World , Personality , Parting , Country

“In the ultimate matter of life and death, survival or defeat, the insular position of the British nation has set us apart from the inhabitants of the adjacent continent. This is a political fact which cannot be pretended out of existence. As long as it remains true, or is believed by the British themselves to remain true, the commitment of Britain to any continental combination can never be total. … True, it has often been rumoured that Britain had lost, or was about to lose, that characteristic; but events have hitherto always proved that she had it still, and those events are the most formative element in the folk-memory of the British people. … This is the reason why Britain, which is in many sense as European as any nation, cannot be integrated politically with the European continent.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech to The Hague (17 May 1971), quoted in The Common Market: Renegotiate or Come Out (Elliot Right Way Books, 1973), p. 109

People , Memory , Sense , Life

“Before more months or years are spent by Ministers, by economic staffs, by industrialists and by trade unionists, in a pursuit which is as foredoomed to futility as filling a sieve or making a rope of sand, it is time to call a halt, and to declare in round and unmistakeable terms that an incomes policy, in any relevant or useful sense, does not and cannot exist—except perhaps in a communist dictatorship.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Birmingham (28 November 1964), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1965), p. 100
1960s

Sense , Time , Making love

“Society is much more than a collection of individuals acting together, even through the complex and subtle mechanisms of the free economy, for material advantage. It has an existence of its own; it thinks and feels; it looks inwards, as a community to its own members; it looks outwards as a nation, into a world populated by other societies, like or unlike itself. The Tory Party, with its deep sense of history, has always concerned itself especially with these two aspects of society, and I believe that the British people would instinctively and rightly reject a philosophy which offered them just an economic machine, however efficient and successful.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Bromley (24 October 1963), quoted in A Nation Not Afraid. The Thinking of Enoch Powell (B. T. Batsford Ltd, 1965), pp. 4–5
1960s

History , Success , People , Communication

“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment. That is the history of the last twenty years.”

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

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1976), quoted in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, p. 188 and James Callaghan, Time and Chance (Collins, 1987), p. 426. This part of his speech was written by his son-in-law, future BBC Economics correspondent Peter Jay
Prime Minister

History , Country , War , Thinking

“There are subjects forbidden by good manners, it seems. As in many societies, I suppose, where the very fundamentals of their existence are the subject of the deepest taboos. What is this terror of reality, I wonder, which plagues the human spirit?”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 4 “On Joining the Gypsies” (pp. 188-189)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Reality

“Here information and philosophies were exchanged, together with all manner of goods. This was a court whose energies were not devoted to maintaining itself unchanged for eternity, but to every kind of new idea and lively, humane discussion, which welcomed fresh thought not as a threat to its existence but as a very necessity to its continued well-being, whose wealth was devoted to experiment in the arts and sciences, to supporting those who were needy, to aiding thinkers and scholars. The Bright Empire’s brightness would come no longer from the glow of putrefaction but from the light of reason and good will.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 1, Chapter 3 “On the Red Road” (p. 160)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)

Light , Support , Wealth , Art

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibilites.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

On the Origin of Species (1859)

Imagination , Light , Sun , Nature

“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.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.
"Introduction", page 5 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=20&itemID=F373&viewtype=image
On the Origin of Species (1859)

Life , Chance , Nature

“England will soon show us her true face: It is a fight for existence between us. England wants to destroy Germany, her most serious rival in the world market, and, if not today or tomorrow, will do so soon, before the German fleet has been further strengthened. I do not believe that the matter will be taken so seriously in official circles with us. As in their way, the Liberal papers try to disguise the gravity of the situation; it is really too hard on them that their paragon, England, should want to break with free trade. A bitter revenge is now in store for those who have sought to turn Germany into an industrial country pure and simple.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

Waldersee in his diary, 19 February 1904, shortly before his death.

Country , Revenge , Fight , Way

“The blockchain is all about bringing in transparency and efficiency into the existing systems which are running the upstream and downstream supply chains and making them more proactive and predictive.”

Rahul Guhathakurta Indian consultant

In his book, The Age of Blockchain: A Collection of Articles, as quoted in factbox on blockchain http://news.upu.int/no_cache/nd/factbox-on-blockchain/, Universal Postal Union on August 2, 2018.

Making love

“In the recognition of the growth in human consciousness and in a realization of the distinction obviously existing between primitive men and our modern intelligent humanity lie the grounds for an unshaken optimism as to human destiny.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Introduction
Problems Of Humanity (1944)

Optimism , Lie , Intelligence , Men

“I grew up with a real romanticism about America. I grew up in a first-generation household where your parents give up everything, and for me America was the greatest thing ever to exist. To be there on the floor of the House was beyond anything my parents would have ever dreamed of.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Quoted in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Coming for Your Hamburgers!, David Remnick, The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-is-coming-for-your-hamburgers (3 March 2019)
Quotes (2019)

Housing , Dreams , Parent

“Black folks are descendants of slaves that were imported, quote-unquote by slave owners, to the United States for the explicit purpose of cultivating crops. And it was predicated on white supremacy and racial superiority, but we have to understand that white supremacy exists for a reason, and they exist for a very specific cultural and economic reasons. And LBJ talked about this — like, if you can convince a poor white man that he’s superior to a black man, he’ll empty his pockets for you. And so it’s not just economic reasons why racism exists but there are economic reasons why racism is perpetuated and incentivized. More of that’s housing, income, et cetera. And like I said on Monday with Ta-Nehisi, until America tells the truth about itself we’re never going to heal. And this — it’s like this thing that as a culture we hide… it’s like this big wound with a big ugly scab on it, and it’s just going to stay this itchy thing that we keep going back to until we just deal with it.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her First Weeks In Washington, The Intercept https://theintercept.com/2019/01/28/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-podcast/ (28 January 2019)
Quotes (2019)

Truth , Understanding , Housing , Quotes

“Existence, for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed-a struggle to incorporate whatever other organisms they can fit into their mouths and press down their gullets without choking. Seen in these stark terms, life on this planet is a gory spectacle, a science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste excrement as they move along in search of more flesh.”

Ernest Becker (1924–1974) American anthropologist

"The Human Condition: Between Appetite and Ingenuity", p. 1
Escape from Evil (1975)

Science , Life , Tear , Search

“During the war we had to stop producing the everyday things which we need in peacetime. We had to concentrate on war production and the bare necessities of existence. The natural result is that to-day we are short of the things which we need. … You may ask why cannot we get what we want from abroad? The answer is that we can only get it if we can pay for it. Before the war many of the things which we got from abroad—food and raw material—were paid for by the interest on foreign investments, and by services rendered by us to people in other countries. During the war we had to sell our foreign investments to pay for the arms, food, and other things we needed. Apart from any temporary relief we may get by loans from our friends across the Atlantic, we can only buy from abroad now if we can pay by exporting goods or rendering services.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Broadcast (3 March 1946), quoted in The Times (4 March 1946), p. 4
Prime Minister

Country , Food , War , People

“We are at war with a system, which, by it’s essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it’s essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796), p. 19

War , Peace , Making love , Country

“Since the House had been prorogued in the summer much work was done in France. The French had shewn themselves the ablest architects of ruin that had hitherto existed in the world. In that very short space of time they had completely pulled down to the ground, their monarchy; their church; their nobility; their law; their revenue; their army; their navy; their commerce; their arts; and their manufactures.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1790), quoted in J. C. D. Clark, 'Introduction', in Clark (ed.), Reflections on the Revolution in France: A Critical Edition (Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 66.
1790s

Time , Housing , Law , Art

“Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him; — That is, when they remember he still exists. Who. you ask, is this fellow?”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

What matter names?
He is only a scribbler who is content.
"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

“The supporters of the Development Hypothesis… can show that any existing species—animal or vegetable—when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.
The Development Hypothesis (1852)

Animals , Support , Change

“I wish that I could believe not in mortality but in reincarnation or individual immortality; I wish that I could be living again in another body or, God help me, even watching from the edge of a fleecy cloud in Heaven or out through the dirty windowpane of a haunted house or through the dull eyes of a dung beetle or on any terms. On any terms I want to be watching, I want to be there, I want to be around, when we reach the stars, when we take over the universe and the universes, when we become the God in whom I do not believe as yet because I do not believe he exists as yet nor will exist until we become Him.”

Fredric Brown book The Lights in the Sky Are Stars

Source: The Lights in the Sky Are Stars (1953), Chapter 4 “2000” (p. 242)

God , Housing , Star , Help

“For many years, the single most potent weapon in the armoury of invisibility was the shame with which gay men and women were taught to regard their sexual nature. What kindles the fury of the antigay right at the gay and lesbian claim to equality and freedom is the implicit rejection of that shame. The energy released by that triumph over shame is what makes the movement so powerful. The gay and lesbian movement signals the existence of a people who have decided that they know more about themselves than what has been shoved down their throats by an ignorant and fearful society.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Non-fiction, Created equal: Why gay rights matter to America (1994), p.129-130

Freedom , People , Nature , Fear

“Pragmatically speaking, there exists no possibility of Taiwan independence. The only option (for Taiwan) is whether to reunify (with Mainland China) or not.”

Ma Ying-jeou (1950) Taiwanese politician, president of the Republic of China

Ma Ying-jeou (2018) cited in: " Taiwan's former President Ma says independence not possible http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201812200018.aspx" in Focus Taiwan, 20 December 2018.
Statement made during the launch of his biography entitled ""A Memoir of Eight Years in Office", 20 December 2018.
Strait issues

“There is no denying existence itself. Something must exist and anyone who says nothing exists at all makes a mockery of sense and necessity. The proposition that there is no denying being itself, then, is a necessary premise. Now this Being which has been admitted in principle is either necessary or contingent… What this means is that a being must be self-sufficient or dependent… From here we argue: If the being the existence of which is conceded be necessary, then the existence of a necessary Being is established. If, on the other hand, its existence is contingent, every contingent being depends on a necessary Being; for the meaning of its contingency is that its existence and non-existence are equally possible. Whatever has such a characteristic cannot have its existence selected for without a determining or selecting agent. This too is necessary. So from these necessary premises the existence of a necessary Being is established.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

(1964) Fada’ih al-Batiniyya. Edited by Abdurahman Badawi. Kuwait: Muasassa Dar al-Kutub al-Thiqafa, p. 82.

Sense , Self-confidence , Making love , Dependency

“When I think of the mystery of existence, I prefer to use other words, so as to avoid confusion. And unlike the God of the Islamic State and the Crusades – who cares a lot about names and above all about His most holy name – the mystery of existence doesn’t care an iota what names we apes give it.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

God , Thinking

“We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are: (1) Popular forces can win a war against the army. (2) It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them. (3) In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

Fight , War , Making love , Waiting

“As a consequence of disease and environmental forces, as well as other factors, a large number of polymorphisms may exist in a population. Some may be related to present selective forces, and others to forces which operated in the past, but which are no longer significant. Present gene frequencies may also result from gene mixture between populations.”

Baruch Samuel Blumberg (1925–2011) American doctor

[Polymorphisms of the serum proteins and the development of iso-preciptins in transfused patients, Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 40, 5, 1964, 377–386, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1750599/?page=2] (quote from 378)

Past , Relation ships , Disease

“Others have centered their activity within their specialty, forming groups within existing organizations and institutions, exposing their co-workers to new ideas, often calling on the larger network for support, feedback, back-up information.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter One, The Conspiracy

Idea , Support

“The whole of modern so-called civilised existence is an attempt to deny reality insofar as it exists. When did Don last look at the stars, when did Norman last get soaked in a rainstorm? The stars as far as these people are concerned are the Manhattan-pattern!”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

He jerked his thumb at a window beyond which the city’s treasure-house of coloured light glimmered gaudily.
continuity (13) “Multiply by a Million”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Star , Reality , People

“So much, then, my friends, is done, in the common and established course of nature, for the welfare of our children. Nature supplies a perennial force, unexhausted, inexhaustible, re-appearing whenever and wherever the parental relation exists. We, then, who are engaged in the sacred cause of education, are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause; and, just as soon as we can make them see the true relation in which they and their children stand to this cause, they will become advocates for its advancement, more ardent and devoted than ourselves.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Lectures and Annual Reports on Education, by Horace and Mary Peabody Mann (1867) https://books.google.com/books?id=EgcNAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA210

Children , Nature , Appearance , Parent

“And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt. It has been thoughtfully observed that every nation, owing to its peculiar character and composition, has a definite mission in the world. What that mission is, and what policy is best adapted to assist in its fulfillment, is the business of its people and its statesmen to know, and knowing, to make a noble use of this knowledge. I need not stop here to name or describe the missions of other or more ancient nationalities. Our seems plain and unmistakable. Our geographical position, our relation to the outside world, our fundamental principles of government, world-embracing in their scope and character, our vast resources, requiring all manner of labor to develop them, and our already existing composite population, all conspire to one grand end, and that is, to make us the perfect national illustration of the unity and dignity of the human family that the world has ever seen. In whatever else other nations may have been great and grand, our greatness and grandeur will be found in the faithful application of the principle of perfect civil equality to the people of all races and of all creeds.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

We are not only bound to this position by our organic structure and by our revolutionary antecedents, but by the genius of our people. Gathered here from all quarters of the globe, by a common aspiration for national liberty as against caste, divine right govern and privileged classes, it would be unwise to be found fighting against ourselves and among ourselves, it would be unadvised to attempt to set up any one race above another, or one religion above another, or prescribe any on account of race, color or creed.
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Family , Faith , Business , People

“Now, if the Abolitionists are the cause of the war, they are the cause of it only because they sought the abolition of slavery. View it in any way you please, therefore, the rebels are fighting for the existence of slavery; they are fighting for the privilege, the horrid privilege of sundering the dearest ties of human nature; of trafficking in slaves and the souls of men; for the ghastly privilege of scourging women and selling innocent children.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

Soul , War , Children , Nature

“Hinduism is the name for the Indian territorial form of worldwide Sanatanism (call it Paganism in English). The ideology of Hindutva should therefore be a Universal ideology: On the international level, the Sangh, as the apex organisational body of Hindutva ideology, should spearhead a worldwide revival, rejuvenation and resurgence of spiritualism, and of all the religions and cultures which existed all over the world before the advent of imperialist ideologies like Christianity, Islam, Fascism, Marxism, etc.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

Talageri in S.R. Goel (ed.): Time for Stock-Taking, p.227-228.

World , Religion , Universe

“I have already accepted the policy of Imperial preference…to the effect that a preference will be given on existing duties and on any duties which may subsequently be imposed. On this subject I think there is no difference of opinion between us. … I am prepared to say that the key industries on which the life of the nation depends must be preserved. I am prepared to say also that, in order to keep up the present standard of production and develop it to the utmost extent possible, it is necessary that security should be give against the unfair competition to which our industries have been in the past subjected by the dumping of goods below the actual cost of production. … I shall look at every problem simply from the point of view of what is the best method of securing the objects at which we are aiming without any regard to theoretical opinions about Free Trade or Tariff Reform.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Andrew Bonar Law (2 November 1918), quoted in The Times (18 November 1918), p. 4
Prime Minister

Dependency , Past , Problem , Thinking

“We won and saved our liberties in this land on more than one occasion by compulsory service. France saved the liberty she had won in the great Revolution from the fangs of tyrannical military empires purely by compulsory service; the great Republic of the West won its independence and saved its national existence by compulsory service, and two of the greatest countries of Europe to-day—France and Italy—are defending their national existence and liberties by means of compulsory service. It has been the greatest weapon in the hands of Democracy many a time for the winning and preservation of freedom.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Manchester (3 June 1915), quoted in The Times (4 June 1915), p. 9
Minister of Munitions

Democracy , Time , Country , Freedom

“We are a poor country that wants to take the efforts and resources now being invested in defense of the revolution and invest it in tractors and plows. And we support general and complete disarmament, under strict international control. We are for an end to the arms race and we salute the SALT II accords as an important step in this direction. We demand respect for the territorial integrity of states and renunciation of the use of force in international relations. We condemn the existence of military bases.”

Daniel Ortega (1945) President of Nicaragua

Nothing Will Hold Back Our Struggle for Liberation (1979)

Support , Effort , Relation ships , Country

“A year ago we had undertaken no specific commitments on the Continent of Europe, beyond those which had then existed. … To-day we are bound by new agreements for mutual defence with Poland and Turkey; we have guaranteed assistance to Greece and Rumania against aggression. … We know that, if the security and independence of other countries are to disappear, our own security and our own independence will be gravely threatened. We know that if international law and order is to be preserved, we must be prepared to fight in its defence.”

Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881–1959) British politician

Speech to the annual dinner of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (29 June 1939), quoted in The Times (30 June 1939), p. 9
Foreign Secretary

Fight , Law , Country

“I think all of the things that Bernie Sanders… listed about paying attention to distressed communities should be done. And we should also have reparations. So, I don’t see those two things as in conflict. It’s not clear to me why both can’t be on the agenda. In fact, it was never clear to me why both can’t be on the agenda, why one can’t associate themselves with the massive gaps in the wealth, that don’t just exist in the African-American community, but exist in communities across the country, and at the same time recognize that there’s something specific about the gap in the African-American community that’s tied to the specificity of American history. But, you know, as I said, I’m happy Senator Sanders now supports H. R. 40.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975) writer, journalist, and educator

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Joe Biden Shouldn’t Be President, Democracy Now (20 June 2019)

Time , History , Country , Support

“Nuclear power has been a difficult issue for Plaid Cymru. We are opposed to nuclear power but have been forced to weigh concerns against the need to attract well-paid jobs to our rural areas. These concerns have created a compromise position of not opposing the replacement of existing nuclear plants. This has pitched people with concerns about the language and environment against each other.”

Leanne Wood (1971) Welsh Plaid Cymru politician

Plaid's nuclear compromise should change, says Leanne Wood https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-45329200, BBC News, 28 August 2018
2018

People

“I am beginning to understand why renunciation has become sovereign in Germany, why an agony paralyses the spirits; why the few heads still living fall prey, partly to a fruitless aestheticism, partly to a fatal belief in evolution. Whether we will or not, we succumb to an overpowering system of profanation that is difficult to escape because there is barely any possibility of spiritual and material existence outside of it.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

Quote of Ball, 28 April 1918, in Flucht aus der Zeit', p. 219, note 42; as quoted by Debbie Lewer in 'Papers of Surrealism Issue 6 Autumn 2007', p. 12
after 1916

Understanding

“The interests of the state alone have guided me, and it has been a calumny when publicists, even well-meaning, have accused me of having ever advocated an aristocratic system. I have never regarded birth as a substitute for want of ability; whenever I have come forward on behalf of landed property, it has not been in the interests of proprietors of my own class, but because I see in the decline of agriculture one of the greatest dangers to our permanence as a state. The ideal that has always floated before me has been a monarchy which should be so far controlled by an independent national representation—according to my notion, representing classes or callings—that monarch or parliament would not be able to alter the existing statutory position before the law separately but only communi consensu; with publicity, and public criticism, by press and Diet, of all political proceedings.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

Volume I, pp. 17–18
Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman

Birth , Law

“The less a necessity naturally exists for individual greed and rapacity, the more dangerous to, and obtrusive upon society it becomes. It is not voracious to satisfy its wants - it devours for the sake of devouring only!”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

Nature

“The State … is evidently nothing more nor less than the political organization of a horde of swindlers and spoliators, who without the tyrannizing machinery could not exist for one day before the just wrath and condemnation of the oppressed and plundered people.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

People

“This is the lot of the poor from the cradle to the grave. Whether he produces or consumes, whether he exists or merely vegetates, he is always surrounded by ravenous vampires who thirst for his last drop of blood.”

Johann Most (1846–1906) German-American anarchist politician, newspaper editor, and orator

The Beast of Property (1884)

“The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.”

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

Letter to Philipp Van Patten http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/letters/83_04_18.htm (18 April 1883)

Victory , Communication

“National Socialism could not be deduced exclusively from a reaction to the Bolshevik movement, that on the contrary there existed, even before the war, a brutal German nationalism, and that explicit intentions of extermination of the Jews were even expressed in the program of one party.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Fascism & Communism (2004), p. 27

War

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

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

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

Self-confidence , Time , Relation ships , Communication

“In immediate self-consciousness the simple ego is absolute object, which, however, is for us or in itself absolute mediation, and has as its essential moment substantial and solid independence. The dissolution of that simple unity is the result of the first experience; through this there is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but for another, i. e. as an existent consciousness, consciousness in the form and shape of thinghood. Both moments are essential, since, in the first instance, they are unlike and opposed, and their reflexion into unity has not yet come to light, they stand as two opposed forms or modes of consciousness. The one is independent whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is dependent whose essence is life or existence for another. The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter is the Bondsman.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book The Phenomenology of Spirit

The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807)

Dependency , Light , Nature , Self-confidence

“I look for the distant horizon, the existence of life, the infinite, the rays of the sun, evolution, I seek the irrational, the indestructible, the wave of the sea, the invincible, I seek the unexpected, the timeless, the intelligible, the resourcefulness, the institutable, I look for the insurable, the non-transferable, the immutable, the insurrection, I seek the unusual, the irreplaceable, the insoluble, the impossible, I seek the onset, the invisible, the primordial, the unreachable, I seek the organism of the cosmos, the mystery of the air, the breath of the wind, the dawning of the dawn, I seek an earth to cultivate, the first flower, the first seed, the future, I seek …”

Ibrahim Kodra (1918–2006) father of Albanian contemporary art

Io cerco l'orizzonte lontano, l'esistenza della vita, l'infinito, i raggi del sole, l'evoluzione, io cerco l'irrazionale, l'indistruttibile, l'onda del mare, l'invincibile, io cerco l'inatteso, l'intemporale, l'inteleggibile, l'intraprendenza, l'istituibile, io cerco l'instaurabile, l'intrasferibile, l'intramutabile, l'insurrezione, io cerco l' inconsueto, l'insostituibile, l'insolubile, l'impossibile, io cerco l'insorgenza, l'invisibile, il primordiale, l'inarrivabile, io cerco l'organismo del cosmo, il mistero dell'aria, il soffio del vento, il sorgere dell'aurora, io cerco una terra da coltivare, il primo fiore, il primo seme, dell'avvenire, io cerco ...

Sun , Future , Intelligence , Flowers

“Faith, like love, does not take up only a few hours of existence, but is its soul, its constant breathing.”

Gianfranco Ravasi (1942) Catholic cardinal

Source: The Encounter: Discovering God Through Prayer (2014), Ch. 1

Love , Faith , Making love , Soul

“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist see him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of himself. Man simply is.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Source: Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946), p. 28

World , God , Making love , Nature

“My philosophy is normal human orthodox philosophy, such as has come down from the Indians through the Greeks, to Spinoza. It is simply not Protestant philosophy. The problems of Protestant philosophy do not exist for me: I regard them as products of a confusion of thought, of a heresy. Catholic philosophy differs from the normal only in that it accepts sacred history as well as natural history as the true account of the facts: but when the facts are agreed upon, one way or another, philosophy has no real difficulty in discovering what to say. It has said everything essential already. To invent a philosophy would be not to have understood.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

George Santayana, in his letter to John Boynton Priestley, 15 September 1924
S - Z, George Santayana

Way , Problem , History , Nature

“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

“A religion of life had come to replace a religion of penance and emaciation, of fasting and prayer. The crucified body had risen in its turn and was no longer abashed Man had reached a harmonious unity: he had discovered that he is a single being not made, like a pendulum, of two different metals,= that check each other; he realised that the foe in his members had ceased to exist.”

Alexander Herzen book My Past and Thoughts

ibid, Ch. 8, s. 12
My Past and Thoughts(1852-1870)

Life , Religion

“It is both painful and shameful to be a slave. But it is even more distressing and painful to acknowledge that our slavery is necessary and normal and that it is a natural phenomenon. A great sin rests on our souls. We have inherited it but are not responsible for it. We are keeping our inheritance unjustly. Like a heavy rock it pushes us to the bottom, and with it around our necks we cannot swim. WE are slaves because our forefathers sold their human dignity for inhuman rights which we now enjoy. We are slaves because we are the masters. We are slaves because we are nobles, that is, nobles without any faith in our tights. We are slaves because we hold our brothers in slavery. They are our equals in birth, blood and language. We will never enjoy freedom as long as the wretched conditions of serfdom oppress us and as long as the hideous shameful, and totally unjust slavery of our peasants exists among us.”

Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) Russian author

"Appeal to Nobles", (June 1853), Imperial Russia, A Source Book 1700-1917

Soul , Pain , Faith , Freedom

“To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.”

Miguel de Unamuno book The Tragic Sense of Life

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God

Hunger , God , Faith , Beauty

“From the perspective of Buddhism, Sartre’s notion of Existence, according to which one must create oneself continually in order to maintain oneself within nothing, remains a standpoint of attachment to the self – indeed, the most profound form of this attachment – and as such is caught in the self-contradiction this implies.”

Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990) Japanese philosopher

Source: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (1990), p. 187

Self-confidence

“He thought about the killing he’d seen, about his final participation in the slaughter on Maro. It still made him want to vomit, the thought of all those people ceasing to exist. Many religions had it that there was another life, another existence following the one known, but Khadaji held no faith in that idea. Maybe so, maybe not. It would be nice, but until it was proven, a person should make the best of his or her time on the physical plane.”

Steve Perry book The Man Who Never Missed

Source: The Man Who Never Missed (1985), Chapter 15 (pp. 130-131)

Faith , Religion , Time , Personality

“The Divine Existence (Daseyn),—his Existence, I say, which, according to the distinction already laid down, is his (Manifestation and Revelation of himself—is absolute- only through itself, and of necessity, LIGHT:—namely, y the inward and spiritual Light. This Light, left to itself, separates and divides itself into an infinite multiplicity of individual rays; and in this way, in these individual rays, becomes estranged from itself and its | original source. But this same Light may also again concentrate itself from out this separation, and conceive and comprehend itself as One, as that which it is in itself,-the Existence and Revelation of God; remaining indeed, even in this conception, that which it is in its form,-Light; but yet in this condition, and even by means of this very condition, announcing it-to self as having no real Being in itself, but as only the, Existence and Self-Manifestation of God.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Way Towards The Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion 1806, p. 78

Way , Self-confidence , God , Light

“There is nothing whatever in Existence but immediate and living Thought:—Thought, I say, but by no means a thinking substance, a dead body in which thought inheres,—with which no-thought indeed a no-thinker is full surely at hand:—Thought, I say, and also the real Life of this Thought, which at bot tom is the Divine Life; both of which—Thought and, this its real Life—are molten together into one inward organic Unity; like as, outwardly, they are one simple, identical, eternal, and unchangeable Unity.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Way Towards The Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion 1806, P. 56

Life , Thinking , Dead

“That which the God devoted man may not do for any consideration, is indeed also outwardly forbidden in the Perfect State; but he has already cast it from him in obedience to the Will of God, without regard to any outward prohibition. That which alone this God-devoted man loves and desires to do, is indeed outwardly commanded in this Perfect State; but he has already done it in obedience to the Will of God. If, then, this religious frame of mind is to exist in the State, and yet never to come into collision with it, it is absolutely necessary that the State should at all times keep pace with the development of the religious sense among its Citizens, so that it shall never command anything which True Religion forbids, or forbid anything which she enjoins. In such a state of things, the well-known principle, that we must obey God rather than man, could never come into application; for in that case man would only command what God also commanded, and there would remain to the willing servant only the choice whether he would pay his obedience to the command of human power, or to the Will of God, which he loves before all things else. From this perfect Freedom and superiority which Religion possesses over the State, arises the duty of both to keep themselves absolutely separate, and to cast off all immediate dependence on each other.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 197

God , Religion , Time , Dependency

“What the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equal Rights for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equal Privileges, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;—but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;—and in so far there did not exist Equal Privileges.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 186

Sense

“The State may either attempt to change the opinions of its citizens for its own advantage; —and in this case, it partly undertakes a thing which it cannot accomplish, and partly shows that its laws are not adapted to the existing condition of the nation to which this system of opinion belongs; or, that the governing power is inadequate, and, being unable to trust to its own resources, needs the aid of a foreign power which can never be thoroughly incorporated with it. Or, the State may attempt, perhaps with the purest intentions, and from the warmest zeal on the part of its administrators for promoting the dominion of Reason, it may attempt to combat the prevailing opinions by means of external power;-and in this case it undertakes a thing in which it can never succeed, for all men feel that it then takes the form of injustice, and the persecuted opinion being thus to a certain extent established in its right, gains new friends by the injustice which it suffers, and by this conviction of the justice of its cause acquires a stronger power of opposition; and the matter ends by the State being obliged to yield, whereby it once more only shows its weakness.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 83

Justice , Law , Suffering , Change

“The fundamental maxim of those who stand at the head of this Age, and therefore the principle of the Age, is this,—to accept nothing as really existing or obligatory, but that which they can understand and clearly comprehend.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

With regard to this fundamental principle, as we have now declared and adopted it without farther definition or limitation, this third Age is precisely similar to that which is to follow it, the fourth, or age of Reason as Science,—and by virtue of this similarity prepares the way for it. Before the tribunal of Science, too, nothing is accepted but the Conceivable. Only in the application of the principle there is this difference between the two Ages,—that the third, which we shall shortly name that of Empty Freedom, makes its fixed and previously acquired conceptions the measure of existence; while the fourth—that of Science—on the contrary, makes existence the measure, not of its acquired, but of its desiderated beliefs.
Source: The Characteristics of the Present Age (1806), p. 19

Understanding , Age

“Blessed be the hour in which I was first led to inquire into my own spiritual nature and destination! All my doubts are removed; I know what I can know, and have no fears for what I cannot know. I am satisfied; perfect clearness and harmony reign in my soul, and a new and more glorious existence begins for me. My entire destiny I cannot comprehend; what I am to become, exceeds my present power of conception. A part, which is concealed from me, is visible to the father of spirits. I know only that it is secure, everlasting and glorious. That part of it which is confided to me I know, for it is the root of all my other knowledge.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.120
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

Soul , Confidence , Nature , Knowledge

“Reason does not exist for the sake of life, but life for the sake of reason. An existence which does not of itself satisfy reason and solve all her doubts, cannot be the true one.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.94
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

Life

“The voice in my soul in which I will have faith, and for the sake of which I have faith in all else, does not merely command me generally to act, but in every particular situation it declares what I shall do and what leave undone; it accompanies me through every event of my life, and it is impossible for me to contend against it. To listen to it and obey it honestly and impartially, without fear or equivocation, is the business of my existence. My life is no longer an empty I play without truth or significance. It is appointed that what I conscience ordains me shall be done, and for this purpose am I here. I have understanding to know, and power to execute it. By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 77
The Vocation of Man (1800), Faith

Life , Soul , Faith , Understanding

“There is nothing enduring, permanent, either in me or out of me, nothing but everlasting change. I know of no existence, not even of my own. I know nothing and am nothing. Images — pictures — only are, pictures which wander by without anything existing past which they wander, without any corresponding reality which they might represent, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these images, or rather a confused image of these images. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a world of which the dream might be, or a mind that might dream it. Contemplation is a dream; thought, the source of all existence and of all that I fancied reality, of my own existence, my own capacities, is a dream of that dream.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 60
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

Past , Dreams , Reality , World

“Spirit: Do not be deceived by sophists and half philosophers; things do not appear to thee by means of any representatives. Of the thing that exists, and that can exist, thou art conscious immediately; thou, thyself, art that of which thou art conscious. By a fundamental law of thy being thou art thus presented to thyself, and thrown out of thyself.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 53
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

Appearance , Law , Art

“That I should by necessity be either wise and good, or foolish or vicious, without having in one case or the other merit or fault — this it was that filled me with aversion and horror. The determination of my actions by a cause out of myself, whose manifestations were again determined by other causes — this it was from which I so violently revolted. The freedom which was not mine, but that of a foreign power, and, in that, only a conditional, half freedom — this it was with which I could not rest satisfied. I myself — that which in this system only appears as the manifestation of a higher existence, I will be independent, — will be something, not by another or through another, but of myself.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 21
The Vocation of Man (1800), Doubt

Appearance , Freedom

“My immediate consciousness, my absolute perception, cannot go beyond myself, — I have immediate knowledge only of myself, whatever I know further I know only by reasoning, in the same manner in which I have come to those conclusions concerning the original powers of Nature, which certainly do not lie within the circle of my perceptions. I, however, — that which I call myself, — am not the man-forming power of Nature, but only one of its manifestations; and only of this manifestation am I conscious, not of that power, whose existence I have only discovered from the necessity of explaining my own.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 13
The Vocation of Man (1800), Doubt

Knowledge , Lie , Nature

“The law commands that the other person shall treat me as a rational being. He does not do so; and the law now absolves mc from all obligation to treat him as a rational being. But by that very absolving it makes itself valid. For the law, in saying that it depends now altogether upon my free-will how I desire to treat the other, or that I have a compulsory right against him, says, virtually, that the other person can not prevent my compulsion; that is, can not prevent it through the mere principle of law, though he may prevent it through physical strength, or through an appeal to morality, (may induce me to forego my compelling him, or prevent me from compelling him by superior strength.)If an absolute community is to be established between persons, as such, each member thereof must assume the above law; for only by constantly treating each other as free beings can they remain free beings or persons. Moreover, since it is possible for each member to treat the other as not a free being, but as a mere thing, it is also conceivable that each member may form the resolve, never to treat the others as mere things, but always as free beings; and since for such a resolve no other ground is discoverable than that such a community of free beings ought to exist, it is also conceivable that each member should have formed that resolve from this ground and upon this presupposition.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

Source: The Science of Rights 1796, P. 132

Dependency , Law , Personality , Communication

“Even the ministers of religion were not exempt from this cruel necessity. While they warned their flocks against the love of money, regard for their families compelled them to keep an outlook for the pecuniary prizes of their calling. Poor fellows, theirs was indeed a trying business, preaching to men a generosity and unselfishness which they and everybody knew would, in the existing state of the world, reduce to poverty those who should practice them, laying down laws of conduct which the law of self-preservation compelled men to break.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 26.

Money , Family , Religion , Law

“As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. The particular grievance I had against the working classes at the time of which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing my wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling toward them.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 1.

Feeling , Time , Wedding , Nature

“To correct the tribe of our younger poets we shall soon require the aid of a physician, not of a critic. Their history may be told in a few words. A young man educated, or rather mis-educated, without experience, without study, without any definite tendency, without the power of exertion, or of tasting any genuine enjoyment, becomes conscious of his miserable oscillation between existence and non-existence —between not having lived and not being about to live—between a barren past and a barren future. He now takes to novel reading, frequents the theatres, compares himself to heroes or poets, and makes verses. All on a sudden the thought flashes across his mind that his unhappy condition is connected with the unfilled profundity of his feelings—with an unsatisfied yearning of the soul. He rushes headlong into the ocean of melancholy, and indulges in expressions with which the poetic springs of latter years have inundated us; he bathes in these waters, and contemplates his own image reflected from their surface.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

Source: The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), pp. 136-137

Soul , Study , Reading , History

“Until we attain a clear idea of our inclinations, the best line of conduct we can pursue is to act uprightly; and establish for ourselves certain rules, adapting them to the various conditions of our existence, so as to penetrate and purify our whole life. Among these rules, I would include the conviction that hatred may be subdued by love; and to impress this axiom more strongly on the mind, we should remember the blessings conferred by love on the human race.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

Source: The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), p. 104 1852 tr

Idea , Love , Life , Making love

“The greatest treasure that God can give his creatures is and ever will be—genuine existence.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

If these words of Herder be true, cultivation is the key to the most precious of treasures; for as Nature has insured the permanence of existence by implanting in us a force of resistance and self-renovation, so may we, on our side, increase the force of these attributes by self-acquired powers of mind.
p 75 1852 translation
The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838)

God

“Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Original: (it) Molti si sono immaginate Repubbliche e Principati, che non si sono mai visti nè cognosciuti essere in vero; perchè egli è tanto discosto da come si vive, a come si doveria vivere, che colui che lascia quello che si fa per quello che si doveria fare, impara piuttosto la rovina, che la preservazione sua.
Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15; translated by W. K. Marriot

Imagination , Reality

“My cousin Zygmunt found a distant relative in Italy, Professor Vettolani, who works as an astrophysicist in Bologna. When we contacted him, it turned out that our family traditions are quite compatible. So I think we are really connected by Etruscan blood. Although Zygmunt, who is a tireless researcher of family history, has several other theories about our origins. It turns out that in Italy there were two, no longer existing, settlements called Vetulani: one in Lazio, and the other in Tuscany, near Pisa.”

Zygmunt Vetulani (1950) Polish mathematician

Jerzy Vetulani, Mózg i błazen, Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2015, ISBN 978-83-8049-092-5, p. 7.

Distant , Family , Thinking , History

“Unlawful revenue which, after being conveniently cleaned, is then reinvested within the legal economy: polluting it, corrupting it, forging it, killing it. Whether it’s reinvested in the London property market, in Parisian restaurants, or in hostels on the French Riviera. Drug trafficking money will buy homes that honest folk can no longer afford; it will open shops that will sell at more competitive prices than legitimate shops; it will start businesses that can afford to be more competitive than clean businesses. But one thing must be clear: these businesses are not interested in being successful; the main purpose for which they were created was to launder money, turning money that shouldn’t even exist into clean and usable money. In silence, illegal assets are moving around and undermining our economy and our democracies. In silence. But it doesn’t stop here; organised crime is providing us with a winning economic model. Organised crime is the only segment of global economy to have not been affected by the financial crisis; to have profited from the crisis, to have fed on the crisis, to have contributed to the crisis. And it’s in the crisis that it finds its satellite activities, such as usury, gambling, counterfeiting. But the most important – and most alarming – aspect of this issue is that it’s exactly in times of crisis that criminal organisations find their safe haven in banks.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

Money , Home , Democracy , Time

“I am still far from being the type of the positively new women who take their experience as females with a relative lightness and, one could say, with an enviable superficiality, whose feelings and mental energies are directed upon all other things in life but sentimental love feelings. After all I still belong to the generation of women who grew up at a turning point in history. Love with its many disappointments, with its tragedies and eternal demands for perfect happiness still played a very great role in my life. An all-too-great role! It was an expenditure of precious time and energy, fruitless and, in the final analysis, utterly worthless. We, the women of the past generation, did not yet understand how to be free. The whole thing was an absolutely incredible squandering of our mental energy, a diminution of our labor power which was dissipated in barren emotional experiences. It is certainly true that we, myself as well as many other activists, militants and working women contemporaries, were able to understand that love was not the main goal of our life and that we knew how to place work at its center. Nevertheless we would have been able to create and achieve much more had our energies not been fragmentized in the eternal struggle with our egos and with our feelings for another. It was, in fact, an eternal defensive war against the intervention of the male into our ego, a struggle revolving around the problem-complex: work or marriage and love? We, the older generation, did not yet understand, as most men do and as young women are learning today, that work and the longing for love can be harmoniously combined so that work remains as the main goal of existence. Our mistake was that each time we succumbed to the belief that we had finally found the one and only in the man we loved, the person with whom we believed we could blend our soul, one who was ready fully to recognize us as a spiritual-physical force. But over and over again things turned out differently, since the man always tried to impose his ego upon us and adapt us fully to his purposes. Thus despite everything the inevitable inner rebellion ensued, over and over again since love became a fetter. We felt enslaved and tried to loosen the love-bond. And after the eternally recurring struggle with the beloved man, we finally tore ourselves away and rushed toward freedom. Thereupon we were again alone, unhappy, lonesome, but free–free to pursue our beloved, chosen ideal …work. Fortunately young people, the present generation, no longer have to go through this kind of struggle which is absolutely unnecessary to human society. Their abilities, their work-energy will be reserved for their creative activity. Thus the existence of barriers will become a spur.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Soul , History , Personality , Perfection

“Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomena but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001)

Imagination , History , Dependency , Mountain

“Pity for poverty, enthusiasm for equality and freedom, recognition of social injustice and a desire to remove it, is not socialism. Condemnation of wealth and respect for poverty, such as we find in Christianity and other religions, is not socialism. The communism of early times, as it was before the existence of private property, and as it has at all times and among all peoples been the elusive dream of some enthusiasts, is not socialism. The forcible equalization advocated by the followers of Baboeuf, the so-called equalitarians, is not socialism. In all these appearances there is lacking the real foundation of capitalist society with its class antagonisms. Modern socialism is the child of capitalist society and its class antagonisms.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

Without these it could not be. Socialism and ethics are two separate things. This fact must be kept in mind. Whoever conceives of socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of capitalist society, is no socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern socialism is unthinkable. Whoever has come to a full consciousness of the nature of capitalist society and the foundation of modern socialism, knows also that a socialist movement that leaves the basis of the class struggle may be anything else, but it is not socialism.
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Religion , Time , Freedom , Wealth

“The Pythagoreans discovered the existence of incommensurable lines, or of irrationals.”

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

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.
Achimedes (1920)

“Kant has rightly observed that by the resolution of the concept of a thing we can find neither that it exists nor that it is the cause of something else, and accordingly that the concepts of being and causality are not analytical but can be derived only from experience. When however he later feels himself obliged to assume that the notion of causality originates in a pre-experiential property of the cognising subject and therefore stamps it a mere rule of time-series, by which, in experience, with each observation as cause any other could be connected as effect, then is the child thrown out with the bath.”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

Indeed, we must derive the relations of causality from experience; but we must not fail to correct and to complete our conception of these facts of experience by reflection.
Causality
Gesammelte Mathematische Werke (1876)

Time , Feeling

“Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry and believed that the sphere was the most perfect of all shapes. Hence the universe must be spherical. …An important feature of the spherical shape… was the fact that when a sphere rotates it does not cut into empty space where there is no matter and it leaves no empty space behind. …A vacuum was impossible. It could no more exist than an infinite physical quantity. …Circular motion was the most perfect and natural movement of all.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)

Time , Past , Nature , Universe

“In Spain there are countless thousands of mothers like yourself who never had a fair shake in life. Their whole existence has been one of trying to get enough food to stay alive for another day. One day these people did something about that. They got together and elected a government that really gave some meaning to their lives and promised to make it so that the millions of mothers like you would never again have to bend their knees and beg to exist in a world that had plenty for everyone.”

Bill Bailey (Spanish Civil War veteran) (1910–1995) American labor activist

The Kid from Hoboken: An Autobiography by Bill Bailey (1993)

Food , People , World , Life

“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: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 28

Self-confidence , Health

“Jixiao Xinshu (New Book Recording Effective Techniques) exists in two editions, the first (c.”

Qi Jiguang book Ji Xiao Xin Shu

1560) had 18 chapters, and the later addition (1584), re-edited with new material had 14.
Jixiao Xinshu (1560; 1584)

Books

“An important distinction exists between prospective and retrospective methods of calculating economic quantities such as incomes, savings, and investments; and… a corresponding distinction of great theoretical importance must be drawn between two alternative methods of defining these quantities. Quantities defined in terms of measurements made at the end of the period in question are referred to as ex post; quantities defined in terms of action planned at the beginning of the period in question are referred to as ex ante.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 34

Question

“Therefore, come to our aid you who alone are able. For this rivalry exists for sake of you, whom alone they revere in everything that all seem to worship. For each one desires in all that he seems to desire only the good which you are; no one is seeking with all his intellectual searching for anything else than the truth which you are. For what does the living seek except to live? What does the existing seek except to exist?”

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

De Pace Fidei (The Peace of Faith) (1453)

Truth , Search

“Time seemed stationary, yet the painful pressure of time was constantly felt. If only the pressure would crush the life out of him and allow him simply to sink into the inviting movement of clock hands or feel the passing of time he could then feel he was getting closer to something or at least further away from something, it didnt really matter which. Nothing really mattered. If only there were some kind of movement. But everything remained motionless, the body not even moving on the bed, while feeling the tearing pressures from all sides in all directions. Feeling deep within him in that pit where there lived the violent and contorting pain of maggots crawling through your guts between the rusty cans and broken bottles and the screaming urgency to get time to move, to just move before every FUCKING GODDAMN PART OF YOUR BODY SCREWS UP INTO A FUCKING BALL AND YOUR WHOLE FUCKING BODY DISINTEGRATES, JUST SHATTERS and there was no escape, even with the lack consciousness, for with it came dreams of wakefulness. There was no escape from the past. The struggle against it only entangled him deeper in the fear of the future. There was no place for him to go. No place he could hide. No place where his enemy didnt exist. No escape from unconscious wakefulness. There was no rest.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Room

The Room (1971)

Fear , Pain , Time , Past

“When Cassie Fowler awoke, she was less shocked to discover that an afterlife existed than to find that she, of all people, had been admitted to it. Her entire adulthood, it seemed, year after year of spiting the Almighty and saluting the Enlightenment, had come to nothing. She’d been saved, raptured, immortalized. Shit. The situation spoke badly of her and worse of eternity. What heaven worthy of the name would accept so ardent an unbeliever as she?”

James K. Morrow book Towing Jehovah

Source: Towing Jehovah (1994), Chapter 4, “Dirge” (p. 67)

Adulthood , People

“A few Oscars maybe. But what value are a few Oscars in front of the adulation and warmth of a billion smiles and the awe and respect of a billion salutes? I have never ceased to be amazed by the limits and standards he sets (for) himself — standards that nobody else imagines even exists!”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

K Balachander, in “K Balachander praises Kamal Hassan! (2 September 2010)”

Smile , Imagination

“All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity… The eroticism of Caravaggio is special because it exists in that area between the simple sensual appreciation of the object which produces the desire to posses it, and the passionate but detached concern of the Observer, which also seeks to posses but to posses through understanding.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)

Passion , Painting , Understanding , Art

“In fact, it is only through the New Testament that we can learn just what Christian faith is. … Open your Bible at any page you like, there is nothing about solving religious problems. Bible testifies that God exists and that he revealed himself through Jesus Christ.”

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

It shows too that the man who lives without God is not living right.
Is there any certainty in religious matters? 2.The Bible gives us wonderful certainties. p. 166
Jesus Our Destiny

God , Faith , Learning , Problem

“Abjuring love? Real people don’t do that. Now you’re the one who sounds like someone on a stage. That’s not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don’t love me, it doesn’t matter; I know you have foresworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable.”

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

She really did smile this time. “Now you’re making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don’t really want to live in it, either.”
Part III, Chapter VIII (p. 299)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

Box , People , Heart , World

Quotes about existence page 69

Quotes about existence
page 69