Quotes and Sayings about Existence
"Not only is the self entwined in society; it owes society its existence in the most literal sense."
- Theodor Adorno
(Related: Society, Existence, Self, Sense)
"No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness."
- Alan Alda
(Related: Being, Existence, Goodness, Man, Woman, World)
"Ideology... is indispensable in any society if men are to be formed, transformed and equipped to respond to the demands of their conditions of existence."
- Louis Althusser
(Related: Men, Society, Existence, Ideology)
"Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence."
- B. R. Ambedkar
(Related: Existence, Mind)
"We are part of a country that outshines those that have gone before us and most of those in existence today."
- Stephen Ambrose
(Related: Country, Existence, Today)
"There are so many things a large intelligence espionage organization can do to justify its existence, that people can get promotions for, because it could result in results."
- Aldrich Ames
(Related: Intelligence, People, Existence, Result, Results)
"The world has not been in existence from eternity nor could it have been according to the present dispensation and ordering of things."
- William Ames
(Related: Eternity, Existence, Present, World)
"I acquired an admiration for Japanese culture, art, and architecture, and learned of the existence of the game of GO, which I still play."
- Philip Warren Anderson
(Related: Architecture, Art, Admiration, Culture, Existence, Play)
"Any existence deprived of freedom is a kind of death."
- Michel Aoun
(Related: Death, Existence, Freedom)
"It is possible to demonstrate God's existence, although not a priori, yet a posteriori from some work of His more surely known to us."
- Thomas Aquinas
(Related: Work, God, Existence)
"No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny."
- Hannah Arendt
(Related: History, Politics, Beginning, Cause, Existence, Fact, Freedom, Tyranny)
"Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence."
- Hannah Arendt
(Related: Growth, Day, Existence, Freedom, May, Proof)
"No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world."
- Aristotle
(Related: Existence, World)
"It's the same thing that drives people to want to experience sexual pleasure or have one too many drinks. We all want to experience the other, and to get out of our daily existence."
- Adam Arkin
(Related: Experience, People, Drinks, Existence, Pleasure, Want)
"Surely one of the most visible lessons taught by the twentieth century has been the existence, not so much of a number of different realities, but of a number of different lenses with which to see the same reality."
- Michael Arlen
(Related: Existence, Reality)
"The arts, as a reflection of human existence at its highest, have always and spontaneously lived up to this demand of plenitude. No mature style of art in any culture has ever been simple."
- Rudolf Arnheim
(Related: Art, Culture, Existence, Reflection, Style)
"My undergraduate education, at the City College in New York, was made possible only by the existence of that excellent free institution and the financial sacrifices of my parents."
- Kenneth Joseph Arrow
(Related: Education, Financial, College, Existence, Parents)
"A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence."
- Kemal Ataturk
(Related: Art, Artists, Existence, Nation)
"One cannot legislate problems out of existence. It has been tried."
- Norman Ralph Augustine
(Related: Existence, Problems)
"The existence of law is one thing; its merit or demerit is another."
- John Austin
(Related: Existence, Law, Merit)
"That whose existence is necessary must necessarily be one essence."
- Avicenna
(Related: Existence)
"The communism of Marx seeks a strong state centralization, and where this exists, there the parasitic Jewish nation - which speculates upon the labor of people - will always find the means for its existence."
- Mikhail Bakunin
(Related: People, Communism, Existence, Labor, Nation, State, Will)
"But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him. All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation."
- Hans Urs von Balthasar
(Related: Death, Life, God, Being, Existence)
"Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence."
- Honore de Balzac
(Related: Colors, Existence)
"An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence."
- Honore de Balzac
(Related: Existence, Man, Vocation)
"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."
- Amiri Baraka
(Related: Art, Thought, Existence, Understanding)
"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence."
- Saint Basil
(Related: Power, Existence, Forget)
"To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them."
- Georges Bataille
(Related: God, Being, Existence, Harmony)
"There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened."
- Charles Baudelaire
(Related: Time, Awareness, Existence, Moments, Space)
"Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know."
- Walter Benjamin
(Related: Existence, Machine, Oil, Opinions)
"That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe."
- John Berger
(Related: Life, Existence)
"Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable."
- Henri Bergson
(Related: Existence, Reason)
"From my own being, and from the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God."
- George Berkeley
(Related: God, Ideas, Act, Being, Existence, Mind, Reason)
"Hunger and sex still dominate the primitive mammalian side of human existence, but at the present time it looks as if humanity were within sight of their satisfaction. Permanent plenty, no longer a Utopian dream, awaits the arrival of permanent peace."
- John Desmond Bernal
(Related: Peace, Time, Sex, Dream, Existence, Humanity, Hunger, Present, Satisfaction, Sight)
"What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Patriotism, War, Country, Existence, Nation, Needs, Vice)
"All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence."
- Otto von Bismarck
(Related: Conflict, Existence, states, Struggle)
"By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech."
- Harry A. Blackmun
(Related: Censorship, Discretion, Existence, Free speech)
"Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence."
- William Blake
(Related: Love, Energy, Existence, Hate, Reason)
"And the sad truth is that nobody wants me to write comedy. The Exorcist not only ended that career, it expunged all memory of its existence."
- William Peter Blatty
(Related: Truth, Career, Comedy, Existence, Memory)
"It is on the acceptance or rejection of the theory of the Unity of all in Nature, in its ultimate Essence, that mainly rests the belief or unbelief in the existence around us of other conscious beings besides the Spirits of the Dead."
- H. P. Blavatsky
(Related: Nature, Belief, Acceptance, Existence, Rejection, Spirits, Theory, Unbelief, Unity)
"Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green."
- H. P. Blavatsky
(Related: Science, Day, Existence, Sea)
"There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech."
- Allan Bloom
(Related: Soul, Existence, Magic, Practice, Speech)
"Not suffering another existence is reaching the Way."
- Bodhidharma
(Related: Existence, Suffering)
"The United States did not choose to fight Islamic extremists. These terrorists chose to fight our way of life. They chose to challenge our existence."
- John Boehner
(Related: Life, Challenge, Existence, Fight, states, United)
"Each and every day, Israel's very existence is at stake."
- John Boehner
(Related: Day, Existence, Israel)
"But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence."
- David Bohm
(Related: People, Action, Existence, Meaning, Word)
"A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
(Related: God, Existence)
"I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part."
- David Bowie
(Related: Heart, America, Existence, Fact)
"A few of the sublimest geniuses of Rome and Athens had some faint discoveries of the spiritual nature of the human soul, and formed some probable conjectures, that man was designed for a future state of existence."
- David Brainerd
(Related: Nature, Soul, Athens, Existence, Future, Man, Rome, Spiritual, State)
"But when I was twelve years old I caught my first strong glimpse of one of the fundamental forces of existence, whose votary I was destined to be for life - namely, Beauty."
- Georg Brandes
(Related: Beauty, Life, Existence, First, Old, Years)
"It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere."
- Andre Breton
(Related: Existence, Living)
"I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you."
- Emily Bronte
(Related: Existence)
"No man or woman can be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without the world being better for it and without someone being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness."
- Phillips Brooks
(Related: Being, Existence, Goodness, Man, Woman, World)
"The first and by far the most likely pattern is a return to agrarian existence."
- Harrison Brown
(Related: Existence, First)
"A horse is the projection of peoples' dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence."
- Pam Brown
(Related: Dreams, Existence, Giving)
"Medicine, the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence."
- James Bryce
(Related: Existence, Medicine, Profession, Reason)
"The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed."
- Buddha
(Related: Fear, Existence, Help, Will)
"It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle."
- Frederick Buechner
(Related: God, Existence, Man)
"Our very strength as lesbians lies in the fact that we are outside of patriarchy; our existence challenges its life."
- Charlotte Bunch
(Related: Life, Strength, Existence, Fact, Lies)
"Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence."
- Wilfred Burchett
(Related: Existence)
"Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Art, Poetry, Existence, Nothing, Shadows)
"I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence."
- Robert Burns
(Related: Existence, Mind, Quotations, Struggle)
"What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence."
- George Byron
(Related: Travel, Existence, Man, Quiet, Waiting)
"But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Truth, Hope, Existence, Nothing)
"Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence. In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Life, Love, Existence, First, Man, Passion, Woman)
"Much of what we see in America, what most people feel has been progress and good things, have been brought about by the existence of third parties."
- Peter Camejo
(Related: People, Progress, America, Existence)
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
- Albert Camus
(Related: Act, Existence, Rebellion, World)
"I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old."
- George Canning
(Related: Balance, Existence, Old, World)
"The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."
- George Carlin
(Related: Time, People, Existence, Fire, Job, Want)
"God ceases to be God only for those who can admit the possibility of His non-existence, and that conception is in itself the most severe punishment they can suffer."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: God, Possibility, Punishment)
"I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence, I know likewise that I shall exist no more when I shall have ceased to feel."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: Knowledge, Existence, Feeling, Giving)
"The mind of a human being is formed only of comparisons made in order to examine analogies, and therefore cannot precede the existence of memory."
- Giacomo Casanova
(Related: Being, Comparisons, Existence, Memory, Mind, Order)
"A vast abortion industry, generating some half a billion dollars annually, sprang into existence in the wake of Roe and Doe."
- Robert Casey
(Related: Abortion, Existence)
"I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all."
- Aime Cesaire
(Related: Idea)
"Actually, I think most people accept the existence of qualia."
- David Chalmers
(Related: People, Existence)
"All the time I feel I must justify my existence."
- Prince Charles
(Related: Time, Existence)
"People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about."
- Anton Chekhov
(Related: People, Existence, Lonely, Talk)
"In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival."
- Noam Chomsky
(Related: Survival, Democracy, Existence, Freedom, Ideals, May)
"You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices."
- Deepak Chopra
(Related: Choice, Choices, Existence, Infinite, Infinity, Possibilities)
"Now it would be as absurd to deny the existence of God, because we cannot see him, as it would be to deny the existence of the air or wind, because we cannot see it."
- Adam Clarke
(Related: God, Existence, Now, Wind)
"To suppose more than one supreme Source of infinite wisdom, power, and all perfections, is to assert that there is no supreme Being in existence."
- Adam Clarke
(Related: Power, Wisdom, Being, Existence, Infinite)
"I'm not sure how aware of the rest of the world I am. I live a rather sheltered existence."
- Julian Clary
(Related: Existence, Rest, World)
"The purpose of this study is to offer a logical, practical, pragmatic proof of the existence of God from a purely scientific perspective."
- John Clayton
(Related: God, Purpose, Existence, Perspective, Proof, Study)
"I believe any question that man can ask has a reasonable answer-at least an answer that is as consistent with God's existence as it is in opposition to God's existence."
- John Clayton
(Related: God, Existence, Man, Opposition, Question)
"After an existence of nearly 20 years of almost innocuous desuetude, these laws are brought forth."
- Grover Cleveland
(Related: Existence, Laws, Years)
"To me, human existence exists on a multiple level, not just on a two-dimensional level, not just having to be identified with what you do and what you say."
- Ornette Coleman
(Related: Existence)
"In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part."
- Jeremy Collier
(Related: Happiness, Life, Men, Acting, Existence, Man, Opinion)
"Every great discovery I ever made, I gambled that the truth was there, and then I acted in faith until I could prove its existence."
- Arthur H. Compton
(Related: Faith, Truth, Discovery, Existence)
"The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore."
- Cyril Connolly
(Related: Life, Success, Existence, Harmony)
"Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life."
- Joseph Conrad
(Related: Art, Imagination, Life, Truth, Men, Existence, Invention)
"To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence."
- Joseph Conrad
(Related: Being, Existence)
"Money is to my social existence what health is to my body."
- Mason Cooley
(Related: Health, Money, Body, Existence)
"The very existence of government at all, infers inequality. The citizen who is preferred to office becomes the superior to those who are not, so long as he is the repository of power, and the child inherits the wealth of the parent as a controlling law of society."
- James F. Cooper
(Related: Government, Society, Power, Wealth, Existence, Inequality, Law, Office)
"All greatness of character is dependent on individuality. The man who has no other existence than that which he partakes in common with all around him, will never have any other than an existence of mediocrity."
- James F. Cooper
(Related: Character, Greatness, Existence, Individuality, Man, Mediocrity, Will)
"Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Being, Existence, Famous, Forget, World)
"Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose."
- William Cowper
(Related: Happiness, Life, Purpose, Bargain, Existence)
"The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us."
- Quentin Crisp
(Related: People, Purpose, Existence, Opinion)
"So not only can you not imagine dying, you can't really imagine existence before you were born."
- David Cronenberg
(Related: Dying, Existence)
"For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do."
- David Cronenberg
(Related: Body, Existence, Fact, First, Mind, Mortality, Reality, Self)
"Though we hear various reports of his existence we can never find the young wizard who is able so they say to graft the soul of a girl to the soul of her lover so that not even the sharp scissors of the Fates can ever sever them apart."
- Harry Crosby
(Related: Soul, Existence)
"Certainly the existence of these huge nuclear force was important for the ultimate confrontation, let's say, over western Europe. You just can't use them to deal with a situation like Afghanistan."
- Lloyd Cutler
(Related: Afghanistan, Europe, Existence, Force)
"A universe that came from nothing in the big bang will disappear into nothing at the big crunch. Its glorious few zillion years of existence not even a memory."
- Paul Davies
(Related: Existence, Memory, Nothing, Universe, Will, Years)
"It's not just for its influence on us, but to know that we can play a part in it, to understand the influence that we have outside our own existence."
- Siobhan Davies
(Related: Existence, Influence, Play)
"My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence."
- Peter Davison
(Related: Poetry, Existence, Friends, State, Talk)
"The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity."
- Richard Dawkins
(Related: Complexity, Evolution, Existence, Theory)
"Every great movement in the history of Western civilization from the Carolingian age to the nineteenth century has been an international movement which owed its existence and its development to the cooperation of many different peoples."
- Christopher Dawson
(Related: Age, History, Civilization, Development, Cooperation, Existence)
"If man limits himself to a satisfied animal existence, and asks from life only what such an existence can give, the higher values of life at once disappear."
- Christopher Dawson
(Related: Life, Values, Existence, Limits, Man)
"The existence of a single atheist does not disprove the existence of God."
- William F. DeVault
(Related: God, Existence)
"Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence."
- Charles Dickens
(Related: Existence)
"In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice."
- Charles Dickens
(Related: Children, Existence, Injustice, Nothing, World)
"The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter."
- Wilhelm Dilthey
(Related: Experience, Knowledge, Existence, Facts, Limits, Question, World)
"I have brought myself, by long meditation, to the conviction that a human being with a settled purpose must accomplish it, and that nothing can resist a will which will stake even existence upon its fulfillment."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Purpose, Being, Conviction, Existence, Fulfillment, Meditation, Nothing, Will)
"We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end."
- Benjamin Disraeli
(Related: Love, End, Existence)
"Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Related: Men, Women, Work, Existence, Reason)
"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation."
- Arthur Conan Doyle
(Related: Work, Existence, Mind, Problems, Routine)
"I believe in the compelling power of love. I do not understand it. I believe it to be the most fragrant blossom of all this thorny existence."
- Theodore Dreiser
(Related: Power, Love, Existence)
"For people who have no critical acumen, a state is a mythical entity, for those who think critically it is a rational fiction, created by man in order to facilitate human coexistence."
- Friedrich Durrenmatt
(Related: People, Fiction, Man, Order, State)
"When I was planning Family Viewing, the Ontario Film Development Corporation came into existence."
- Atom Egoyan
(Related: Family, Development, Existence, Film, Planning)
"I am the epitome of a walking contradiction for various reasons, only one of which being that I feel my existence is of heaven and hell."
- Kim Elizabeth
(Related: Being, Contradiction, Existence, Heaven, Hell, Walking)
"For the word is dialectical in itself and at the same time is integrated into the whole of existence. By this I mean that the word is intended to be lived."
- Jacques Ellul
(Related: Time, Existence, Word)
"Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Related: Deeds, Existence, Fate, Nothing, State)
"Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence."
- Friedrich Engels
(Related: Existence, Judgment, Reason)
"However, democracy cannot be defined as the existence of parliaments and elections alone."
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan
(Related: Democracy, Elections, Existence)
"Even in the Western world, one cannot argue that the ideal has been achieved given the existence of issues like the integration, participation and representation of Muslim citizens, and occasional but lingering anti-Semitism."
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan
(Related: Muslim, Existence, Participation, World)
"I will for ever, at all hazards, assert the dignity, independence, and integrity of the English bar; without which, impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English constitution, can have no existence."
- Thomas Erskine
(Related: Constitution, Dignity, English, Existence, Independence, Integrity, Justice, Will)
"What is the value of your existence?"
- Stephen Evans
(Related: Existence, Value)
"Peace Corps helps promote global acceptance of the principles of international peace and non-violent co-existence among people of diverse cultures and systems of government."
- Sam Farr
(Related: Government, Peace, People, Acceptance, Principles)
"The novel doesn't come into existence until certain methods of reproducing fiction come along."
- Leslie Fiedler
(Related: Existence, Fiction)
"I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point."
- Laurence Fishburne
(Related: Life, Purpose, Being, Existence, Man, Meaning, Open, Questioning)
"Moreover, all our knowledge of organic remains teaches us, that species have a definite existence, and a centralization in geological time as well as in geographical space, and that no species is repeated in time."
- Edward Forbes
(Related: Time, Knowledge, Existence, Space)
"There is a serious, immediate and extraordinarily grave threat to the continued existence of this country."
- James Forrestal
(Related: Country, Existence, Grave)
"The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists."
- E. M. Forster
(Related: Art, Work, Existence, Fact)
"The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans."
- Jim Fowler
(Related: Life, Quality, Existence, Wilderness, Wildlife)
"Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream."
- Anatole France
(Related: Dream, Existence)
"A civilization which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence."
- Sigmund Freud
(Related: Civilization, Existence)
"It is only the consciousness of a nonexistence which allows us to realize for moments that we are living."
- Max Frisch
(Related: Consciousness, Living, Moments)
"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Love, Existence)
"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve."
- Erich Fromm
(Related: Existence, Man)
"I would say a lot of the emotion in what I do is a sort of a thankfulness for those energies being around, because there's been points in my life when they weren't around, and it's a real sort of miserable existence."
- John Frusciante
(Related: Life, Being, Emotion, Existence, Thankfulness)
"In my plays I want to look at life - at the commonplace of existence-as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time."
- Christopher Fry
(Related: Life, Time, Existence, First, Want)
"I want to look at life - at the commonplaces of existence - as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time."
- Christopher Fry
(Related: Life, Time, Existence, First, Want)
"To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'"
- Robert Fulghum
(Related: Existence)
"It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to woman is her whole existence; she is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy."
- Margaret Fuller
(Related: Love, Truth, Energy, Error, Existence, Woman)
"This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof."
- Neil Gaiman
(Related: Work, Existence, Fiction, Folk)
"I regret the whole worlds that will never come into existence, the children, the grandchildren, all the human possibilities that never were and never will be."
- Maggie Gallagher
(Related: Children, Existence, Possibilities, Regret, Will)
"I would like to mention that I have flown the 262 first in May '43. At this time, the aircraft was completely secret. I first knew of the existence of this aircraft only early in '42 - even in my position. This aircraft didn't have any priority in design or production."
- Adolf Galland
(Related: Design, Time, Existence, First, May, Production)
"I made a written report which is still today in existence. I have a photocopy of it, and I am saying that in production this aircraft could perhaps substitute for three propeller- driven aircraft of the best existing type. This was my impression."
- Adolf Galland
(Related: Impression, Existence, Production, Saying, Today)
"Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community."
- John W. Gardner
(Related: Men, People, Belief, Community, Existence, Integrity)
"And woven into the fabric of this harsh existence was music."
- Lesley Garrett
(Related: Music, Existence)
"An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself."
- Jose Ortega y Gasset
(Related: Death, Life, Existence)
"The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities."
- Jose Ortega y Gasset
(Related: Difficulties, Existence, Order)
"There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence."
- Peter Gay
(Related: Accomplishment, Aggression, Example, Existence, Sense)
"I take pride in the creation of my wealth, in its existence and in the uses to which it has been and is being put."
- Paul Getty
(Related: Wealth, Being, Creation, Existence, Pride)
"People from major labels were afraid to go to Black Flag gigs throughout most of the band's existence. They treated our gigs as something threatening. I'm sure that it probably was. They probably had reasons to be scared."
- Greg Ginn
(Related: People, Existence)
"Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Related: Existence, Individuality)
"Married life is an existence with bars around it."
- Al Goldstein
(Related: Life, Existence)
"Have friends. 'Tis a second existence."
- Baltasar Gracian
(Related: Existence, Friends)
"We have spoken of beings so low in the scale that the individuals throughout their whole existence are not sufficiently specialized to be distinctively plant or animal: yet these are definite life in simpler shape."
- Asa Gray
(Related: Life, Existence)
"On embarking to return we could perceive no sign of One Tree Island; and as we swept down towards the sea the leafy top of a tree seen in the clear water under the boat was the only evidence of its existence; though a few hours ago it had formed so prominent an object."
- George Grey
(Related: Existence, Sea, Water)
"I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God."
- Bede Griffiths
(Related: Time, God, Existence)
"Research challenges the materialistic understanding of death, according to which biological death represents the final end of existence and of all conscious activity."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Death, End, Existence, Research, Understanding)
"It is possible to see the intermediate state between lives as being in a way more important than incarnate existence."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Being, Existence, State)
"It is possible to spend one's entire lifetime without ever experiencing the mystical realms or even without being aware of their existence."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Being, Existence)
"At a time when unbridled greed, malignant aggression, and existence of weapons of mass destruction threatens the survival of humanity, we should seriously consider any avenue that offers some hope."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Time, Hope, Survival, Aggression, Destruction, Existence, Greed, Humanity, Weapons)
"The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence."
- Stanislav Grof
(Related: Existence)
"The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents."
- Ernst Haeckel
(Related: Love, Cause, Existence, Parents)
"If you want a bourgeois existence, you shouldn't be an actor. You're in the wrong profession."
- Uta Hagen
(Related: Actor, Existence, Profession, Want, Wrong)
"In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources."
- Alexander Hamilton
(Related: Progress, Existence, Nation, Will)
"It is a lonely existence to be a child with a disability which no-one can see or understand, you exasperate your teachers, you disappoint your parents, and worst of all you know that you are not just stupid."
- Susan Hampshire
(Related: Disability, Existence, Lonely, Parents, Teachers)
"Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff."
- Stephen Harper
(Related: Society, Existence, Fact, Rights, Human rights)
"I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence."
- Jim Harrison
(Related: Existence, Fact, Gender)
"Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing."
- Bret Harte
(Related: Death, Possibility, Existence, Man)
"Baseball is a lot like life. It's a day-to-day existence, full of ups and downs. You make the most of your opportunities in baseball as you do in life."
- Ernie Harwell
(Related: Life, Baseball, Day, Existence)
"Beyond peace, there is no longer any existence possible."
- Gustav Heinemann
(Related: Peace, Existence)
"Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence."
- O. Henry
(Related: Conversation, Existence)
"Do you not see, first, that - as a mental abstract - physical force is directly opposed to morality; and secondly, that it practically drives out of existence the moral forces?"
- Auberon Herbert
(Related: Morality, Existence, First, Force)
"Apple was our benefactor at starting General Magic, but about a year later decided they would rather BE General Magic and tried to make us blink out of existence... which we eventually did, but it took a few years."
- Andy Hertzfeld
(Related: Existence, Magic, Years)
"Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation."
- Theodor Herzl
(Related: Being, Existence, Nation, Risk, Today, Years)
"This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification."
- Herman Hesse
(Related: Happiness, Contentment, Existence, Feeling, Harmony, Nothing)
"If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology."
- David Hilbert
(Related: Men, Astrology, Existence, World)
"Jackson, however, persevered. He joined the Franklin Debating Society, an institution that had been in existence over fifty years, and had enrolled in its membership some of the ablest men in Virginia."
- Daniel H. Hill
(Related: Men, Society, Existence, Years)
"It does not seem to me to be sufficiently recognized everywhere among the officials that the existence or non-existence of our people and Empire is at stake."
- Paul von Hindenburg
(Related: People, Existence)
"Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone."
- Russell Hoban
(Related: Men, Women, Difference, Existence)
"The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Existence)
"A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Related: Existence, Man, May, Question)
"Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value."
- Sidney Hook
(Related: Existence, Philosophy, Value)
"No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women."
- bell hooks
(Related: Women, People, America, Existence, Focus, Identity)
"The mere dates of my existence do not interest me, except in one connection. When the Great War started I was too old to be acceptable as a volunteer; when conscription followed I was too old to be conscripted."
- Laurence Housman
(Related: War, Connection, Existence, Interest, Old)
"All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied."
- Vernon Howard
(Related: Behavior, Existence, Self, Unconscious)
"The reason why China suffers bitterly from endless wars is because of the existence of feudal lords and kings."
- Qin Shi Huangdi
(Related: Existence, Kings, Reason)
"The puma is, with the exception of some monkeys, the most playful animal in existence."
- William Henry Hudson
(Related: Existence)
"Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself."
- Cordell Hull
(Related: Life, Peace, War, Circumstances, Existence, Shadow, World, World war)
"I think it's wrong that so many people pass on from this existence, and take all their knowledge with them."
- Rex Hunt
(Related: People, Knowledge, Existence, Wrong)
"The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact."
- William Hurt
(Related: Being, Existence, Fact)
"I wish to say to you that the life of an enlightened people and a vibrant nation cannot be measured by the life of an individual. A successful person is one who manages to lay down a new stone, a brick that would help firm up his nation's existence."
- King Hussein I
(Related: Life, People, Successful, Existence, Help, Nation)
"The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals."
- Thomas Huxley
(Related: Power, Existence, Right, Struggle, Theory, Thinking, World)
"The existence is a tremendous curiosity, with in the course of the years, the discovery of yourself in your inmost evolutions. With the age you feel better than you are, what you represent. Which means a little at the planet's scale."
- Jacky Ickx
(Related: Age, Curiosity, Discovery, Existence, Years)
"The fabric of existence weaves itself whole."
- Charles Ives
(Related: Existence)
"The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life."
- Henry James
(Related: Life, Existence, Reason)
"The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one."
- William James
(Related: Life, Argument, Existence, Man)
"Like their personal lives, women's history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others."
- Elizabeth Janeway
(Related: History, Women, Existence, Shadow)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: God, Fear, Blind, Boldness, Existence, Question, Reason)
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: God, Fear, Boldness, Existence, Fact, Opinion, Question, Reason)
"If we need to be reminded to love one another, then we have already lost sight of the very essence of our existence."
- Darren L. Johnson
(Related: Love, Existence, Sight)
"The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: History, Life, Science, God, Existence, Scientists)
"First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: Life, Diversity, Existence, First, Living, Theory)
"Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: Birds, Content, Existence, First, Flowers, Limits, Question)
"At Leeds the idea of an international labour organization appeared in a trade-union text which also drew attention to the danger to the working classes inherent in the existence of international capitalist competition."
- Leon Jouhaux
(Related: Idea, Attention, Competition, Danger, Existence, Trade)
"The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails."
- James Joyce
(Related: God, Artist, Creation, Existence)
"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being."
- Carl Jung
(Related: Purpose, Being, Darkness, Existence, Light)
"Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence."
- Franz Kafka
(Related: Existence, Infinite, Self, Spiritual)
"The Jewish nation is indeed, the heart of the world and there is no reason for the existence of empires, kings, rulers, masses or systems aside from their reaction to the Jewish people."
- Meir Kahane
(Related: People, Heart, Existence, Kings, Nation, Reason, World)
"The observant Jew has his own sense of values. Torah Judaism is his blueprint for this life, his target for existence."
- Meir Kahane
(Related: Life, Values, Existence, Judaism, Sense)
"We owe our existence to our parents, but we actually didn't have a choice."
- Leon Kass
(Related: Choice, Existence, Parents)
"It is widely assumed, contrary to fact, that theism necessarily involves the two assumptions which cannot be squared with the existence of so much suffering, and that therefore, per impossibile, they simply have to be squared with the existence of all this suffering, somehow."
- Walter Kaufmann
(Related: Existence, Fact, Suffering)
"Those who believe in God because their experience of life and the facts of nature prove his existence must have led sheltered lives and closed their hearts to the voice of their brothers' blood."
- Walter Kaufmann
(Related: Experience, Life, Nature, God, Blood, Brothers, Existence, Facts, Voice)
"The way I see things, the way I see life, I see it as a struggle. And there's a great deal of reward I have gained coming to that understanding - that existence is a struggle."
- Harvey Keitel
(Related: Life, Existence, Reward, Struggle, Understanding)
"Whichever theory we adopt to give a rational explanation of human existence, that theory must take into account and explain the mental nature we see at work in all modern communities."
- Arthur Keith
(Related: Nature, Work, Existence, Theory)
"A great number of the women are victims to falling of the womb and weakness in the spine; but these are necessary results of their laborious existence, and do not belong either to climate or constitution."
- Fanny Kemble
(Related: Women, Climate, Constitution, Existence, Results, Victims, Weakness)
"When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses."
- John F. Kennedy
(Related: Poetry, Power, Arrogance, Concern, Diversity, Existence, Limitations, Man, Richness)
"She made the decision that her existence had lost its meaning. And you cannot judge that."
- Jack Kevorkian
(Related: Decision, Existence, Meaning)
"The emergence of Pakistan, a decade ago, was an act of protest against the existence of privilege in the social order of the subcontinent of India."
- Aly Khan
(Related: Act, Existence, Order, Privilege, Protest)
"People commonly travel the world over to see rivers and mountains, new stars, garish birds, freak fish, grotesque breeds of human; they fall into an animal stupor that gapes at existence and they think they have seen something."
- Soren Kierkegaard
(Related: Travel, People, Birds, Existence, Fish, Mountains, Rivers, Stars, World)
"I think one's sexuality can be the center of life, and coming out and discovering your sexuality is something that really can define your existence."
- Mia Kirshner
(Related: Life, Existence, Sexuality)
"God is a challenge because there is no proof of his existence and therefore the search must continue."
- Donald Knuth
(Related: God, Challenge, Existence, Proof)
"The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has been in existence for most of this century."
- C. Everett Koop
(Related: Existence, Teaching)
"Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former."
- Karl Kraus
(Related: Civilization, Purpose, Agreement, Culture, Existence)
"No: war material is life-saving for one's own people and whoever works and performs in these spheres can be proud of it; here enterprise as a whole finds its highest justification of existence."
- Gustav Krupp
(Related: War, People, Life, Existence, Justification)
"A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality."
- Milan Kundera
(Related: Morality, Knowledge, Existence)
"For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?"
- Milan Kundera
(Related: Existence)
"The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish."
- Milan Kundera
(Related: Time, Being, Existence, Light, Man, May, Old, Will)
"The seminaries must be like the churches' poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity."
- Abraham Kuyper
(Related: Churches, Existence, Poor)
"In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth."
- Jacques Lacan
(Related: Deals, Existence, First, Language, Man, Words)
"Rule A: Don't. Rule A1: Rule A doesn't exist. Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or non-existence of Rules A, A1 or A2."
- R. D. Laing
(Related: Existence, Rules)
"All species capable of grasping this fact manage better in the struggle for existence than those which rely upon their own strength alone: the wolf, which hunts in a pack, has a greater chance of survival than the lion, which hunts alone."
- Christian Lous Lange
(Related: Strength, Survival, Chance, Existence, Fact, Struggle)
"People are afraid of things they don't understand. They don't know how to relate. It threatens their security, their existence, their career, image."
- Bill Laswell
(Related: People, Career, Existence, Security)
"I am waiting for a sign that will indicate to me what meaning I must give to my life, but right now my existence is satisfactory."
- Lucy Lawless
(Related: Life, Existence, Meaning, Now, Right, Waiting, Will)
"Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror."
- David Herbert Lawrence
(Related: Death, Creation, Existence, Horror, Mankind)
"I think everyone has some fascination with what's outside our existence. It's a constant journey to find the truth."
- Nicholas Lea
(Related: Truth, Existence, Journey)
"Sometime during the many millions of years that have elapsed since mammalian faunas came into existence, some sort of island crossed from West Africa to South America."
- Louis Leakey
(Related: America, Existence, Years)
"The most mysterious feminine factor, the existence that we men, we don't know. It's woman. It's feminine. That's what the sword is about. That's the symbolic meaning of the sword."
- Ang Lee
(Related: Men, Existence, Meaning, Woman)
"If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons."
- C. S. Lewis
(Related: Enemies, Existence, Struggle)
"To the socialist no nation is free whose national existence is based upon the enslavement of another people, for to him colonial peoples, too, are peoples, and, as such, parts of the national state."
- Karl Liebknecht
(Related: People, Existence, Nation, State)
"Universities are the cathedrals of the modern age. They shouldn't have to justify their existence by utilitarian criteria."
- David Lodge
(Related: Age, Existence)
"The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence."
- Henry Cabot Lodge
(Related: Power, Hope, Europe, Existence, Nations, Quarrels, states, United, Will, World)
"Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence."
- Oliver Joseph Lodge
(Related: Death, Soul, Body, Existence)
"Wherever modern translations of marked excellence were already in existence efforts were made to secure them for the Library, but in a number of instances copyright could not be obtained."
- James Loeb
(Related: Excellence, Existence)
"Playing a fashion designer could be the bane of my existence because I am married to a fashion designer."
- Lori Loughlin
(Related: Existence, Fashion)
"There was no male vampire type in existence. Someone suggested an actor of the Continental School who could play any type, and mentioned me."
- Bela Lugosi
(Related: Actor, Existence, Play, School)
"When I recall today my early youth, I should take the boy that I then was, with the exception of a few individual features, for a different person, were it not for the existence of the chain of memories."
- Ernst Mach
(Related: Existence, Memories, Today, Youth)
"Money, again, has often been a cause of the delusion of the multitudes. Sober nations have all at once become desperate gamblers, and risked almost their existence upon the turn of a piece of paper."
- Charles Mackay
(Related: Money, Cause, Delusion, Existence, Nations)
"I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves."
- Shirley MacLaine
(Related: Existence, Will)
"We imagine that we want to escape our selfish and commonplace existence, but we cling desperately to our chains."
- Anne Sullivan Macy
(Related: Existence, Want)
"Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking."
- Gustav Mahler
(Related: Existence)
"Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit."
- Norman Mailer
(Related: Dying, Existence, Living)
"Now, we occupy a lowly position, both in space and rank in comparison with the heavenly sphere, and the Almighty is Most High not in space, but with respect to absolute existence, greatness and power."
- Maimonides
(Related: Power, Greatness, Existence, Now, Rank, Respect, Space)
"I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence."
- Robert Mapplethorpe
(Related: Existence, Madness, Photography, Today)
"Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes - every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man."
- Orison Swett Marden
(Related: Soul, Clouds, Existence, Flowers, Man, Rivers, Stars)
"This planet Earth, the act of putting a roof over our heads, our flesh and blood existence, it's all very temporary."
- Melissa Auf der Maur
(Related: Act, Blood, Earth, Existence)
"Existence is a party. You join after its started and you leave before its finished."
- Elsa Maxwell
(Related: Existence, Party)
"Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points; the higher the rank the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being may produce results of the greatest importance."
- James C. Maxwell
(Related: Being, Existence, Importance, May, Rank, Results)
"So we can't go backwards, we can only go where the evolutionary trajectory is taking us and attune our ideas about ourselves and our existence to that course."
- Thom Mayne
(Related: Ideas, Existence)
"According to the concept of transformational evolution, first clearly articulated by Lamarck, evolution consists of the gradual transformation of organisms from one condition of existence to another."
- Ernst Mayr
(Related: Evolution, Existence, First)
"I AM what is called a Feminist. Thirty years ago I left a monastery and began a sane human existence. Within two or three years, I find, I was defending the rights of women."
- Joseph McCabe
(Related: Women, Existence, Rights, Years)
"If I had no family, my wife and I would lead a much more romantic and nomadic existence."
- David McCallum
(Related: Family, Wife, Existence, Romantic)
"There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."
- Carson McCullers
(Related: Existence, Nothing, Old, Song)
"Join me in my quest for a greater understanding of our existence. Join me in my desire for a greater self. Join me as I seek the humility to love and understand my fellow man."
- Bryant H. McGill
(Related: Love, Desire, Existence, Humility, Man, Quest, Self, Understanding)
"Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process that you are hardly aware of its existence, until you try to communicate with someone with a different paradigm."
- Donella Meadows
(Related: Existence)
"The truth about Hamas and Islamic Jihad is that they don't prevent Israel from existing or even flourishing, they prevent Palestine from coming into existence."
- Michael Medved
(Related: Truth, Existence, Israel, Palestine)
"The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line."
- H. L. Mencken
(Related: War, Existence, Fact, Tragedy)
"It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order in nature and to find the causes governing this order. And this refers in equal measure to the relations of man - social and political - and to the entire universe as a whole."
- Dmitri Mendeleev
(Related: Nature, Science, Causes, Existence, Man, Measure, Order, Universe)
"Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence."
- Moses Mendelssohn
(Related: God, Consciousness, Existence, Ignorance, Proof, Thinking)
"In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence."
- Thomas Merton
(Related: Life, Existence, Living, Meaning, Responsibility)
"Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Consciousness, Evil, Existence)
"In the battle of existence, Talent is the punch; Tact is the clever footwork."
- Wilson Mizner
(Related: Talent, Battle, Existence, Tact)
"We must guarantee the quality of the existence of the men and women of tomorrow."
- Marc Forne Molne
(Related: Men, Women, Quality, Existence, Tomorrow)
"At no period of our political existence had we so much cause to felicitate ourselves at the prosperous and happy condition of our country."
- James Monroe
(Related: Cause, Country, Existence)
"For I never have seen, and never shall see, that the cessation of the evidence of existence is necessarily evidence of the cessation of existence."
- William De Morgan
(Related: Existence)
"I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences."
- Jim Morrison
(Related: Art, People, Trying)
"Sexual relations, of course, have existed, exist, and will exist. However, this is in no way connected with the indispensability of the existence of the family."
- Ferdinand Mount
(Related: Family, Existence, Will)
"What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really see the world, but when we do, we become as still as a picture."
- Robert Musil
(Related: Painting, Want, World)
"Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."
- Vladimir Nabokov
(Related: Existence)
"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
- Vladimir Nabokov
(Related: Common sense, Darkness, Existence, Light)
"North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity. This is a rare thing in today's world, even in its most liberal parts."
- Nursultan Nazarbayev
(Related: Christianity, Islam, Liberal, Religious, Today, Tolerance, World)
"The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction."
- Jawaharlal Nehru
"The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the "I," under another form, continues the task of existence."
- Gerard De Nerval
(Related: Death, Thoughts, Existence, First, Moments, Sleep)
"As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest."
- Simon Newcomb
(Related: Existence, Interest, Mathematics, May, Navy)
"No person who denies the existence of a supreme being shall hold any office under this Constitution."
- Michael Newdow
(Related: Being, Constitution, Existence, Office)
"Those who deny the existence of a supreme being have been turned into second-class citizens by a government that continuously sends messages that 'real Americans' believe in God."
- Michael Newdow
(Related: Government, God, Americans, Being, Existence)
"We have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed."
- James Newman
(Related: Existence)
"In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Truth, Absurdity, Consciousness, Existence, Man, Now)
"Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Existence, Present)
"The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(Related: Argument, Existence)
"That is the exploration that awaits you! Not mapping stars and studying nebula, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence."
- Leonard Nimoy
(Related: Existence, Exploration, Possibilities, Stars)
"Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with which, in any kind of reason, one can associate the idea of immortality."
- Albert J. Nock
(Related: Life, Quality, Idea, Belief, Existence, Immortality, Reason)
"Why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists solely to make money. Money is an important part of a company's existence, if the company is any good. But a result is not a cause. We have to go deeper and find the real reason for our being."
- David Packard
(Related: Money, People, Being, Cause, Company, Existence, Reason, Result)
"Skin has become inadequate in interfacing with reality. Technology has become the body's new membrane of existence."
- Nam June Paik
(Related: Technology, Body, Existence, Reality, Skin)
"There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes."
- Evan Parker
(Related: History, Music, Character, Existence, Interest, Martin, Sound)
"Our experiments not only proved the existence of a nervous apparatus in the above-mentioned glands, but also disclosed some facts clearly showing the participation of these nerves in normal activity."
- Ivan Pavlov
(Related: Existence, Facts, Nerves, Participation)
"God is creating at every moment of the world's existence in and through the perpetually endowed creativity of the very stuff of the world."
- Arthur Peacocke
(Related: God, Creativity, Existence, World)
"The life of inner peace, being harmonious and without stress, is the easiest type of existence."
- Norman Vincent Peale
(Related: Life, Peace, Being, Existence, Stress)
"The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence."
- Robert Peel
(Related: Time, Attention, Being, Community, Existence, Police, Public, Welfare)
"Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing."
- Charles Sanders Peirce
(Related: Chaos, Existence, Nothing, Reality)
"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter."
- Max Planck
(Related: Virtue, Existence, Force, Mind)
"It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream."
- Edgar Allan Poe
(Related: Dream, Existence, Fancy, Future, Present)
"Absolute space, that is to say, the mark to which it would be necessary to refer the earth to know whether it really moves, has no objective existence."
- Henri Poincare
(Related: Earth, Existence, Space)
"Theories of evolution must provide for the creative acts which brought such theories into existence."
- Michael Polanyi
(Related: Evolution, Existence, Theories)
"The particular features of the photographic method of detecting atomic particles enabled us to establish the existence of transient forms of matter which had escaped recognition by other methods."
- Cecil Frank Powell
(Related: Existence)
"The greatest writers of this age... are aware of the mystery of our existence."
- J. B. Priestley
(Related: Age, Existence, Mystery, Writers)
"There cannot be peaceful coexistence in the ideological realm. Peaceful coexistence corrupts."
- Jiang Qing
"I enter negotiations with Chairman Arafat, the leader of the PLO, the representative of the Palestinian people, with the purpose to have coexistence between our two entities, Israel as a Jewish state and Palestinian state, entity, next to us, living in peace."
- Yitzhak Rabin
(Related: Peace, Leader, People, Purpose, Israel, Living, State)
"Well, you have a defence attache here, that's a step forward. Your Defence Minister has been here, our defence people have exchanges with you. So friendly relations at the military level are already in existence."
- Sellapan Ramanathan
(Related: People, Existence, Military)
"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Men, Society, Civilization, Progress, Existence, Laws, Man, Privacy, Public)
"The Cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that it caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of his incarnate Son."
- Joseph Ratzinger
(Related: Death, Son, God, Act, Existence, Quick, Radical, Words, Worth)
"I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
- Man Ray
(Related: Existence)
"Progress is measured by richness and intensity of experience - by a wider and deeper apprehension of the significance and scope of human existence."
- Herbert Read
(Related: Experience, Progress, Existence, Richness)
"Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence."
- Ronald Reagan
(Related: Purpose, Existence, Welfare)
"If the Soviet Union let another political party come into existence, they would still be a one-party state, because everybody would join the other party."
- Ronald Reagan
(Related: Existence, Party, State)
"I'm sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime."
- Keanu Reeves
(Related: Existence)
"I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?"
- Adam Rich
(Related: Existence, Sound)
"Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women."
- Adrienne Rich
(Related: Women, Life, Existence, Lesbian, Rejection, Right)
"Hiphop hasn't had stages of growth through its 30 years of existence."
- Slick Rick
(Related: Growth, Existence, Years)
"Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence."
- Paul Ricoeur
(Related: Existence, Man, Myth, Understanding, World)
"However dark and profitless, however painful and weary, existence may have become, life is not done, and our Christian character is not won, so long as God has anything left for us to suffer, or anything left for us to do."
- Frederick William Robertson
(Related: Life, God, Character, Christian, Existence, May)
"If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India."
- Romain Rolland
(Related: Dreams, Home, Men, Earth, Existence, Living, Man)
"I know that some endeavor to throw the mantle of romance over the subject and treat woman like some ideal existence, not liable to the ills of life. Let those deal in fancy who have nothing better to deal in; we have to do with sober, sad realities, with stubborn facts."
- Ernestine Rose
(Related: Life, Romance, Existence, Facts, Fancy, Nothing, Woman)
"We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man."
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Life, Being, Existence, Man)
"There are some things that we know are just not as pleasant as the lies that we tell ourselves, and in that sense in order to endure existence everyone endures a certain amount of dishonesty in their everyday lives."
- Todd Rundgren
(Related: Dishonesty, Existence, Lies, Order, Sense)
"I think a lot of what is going on with kids who get pushed too far and attempt either murder or suicide is that they are trying to deal with their own non-existence for the people who are supposed to care most for them."
- Richard Russo
(Related: People, Care, Kids, Murder, Suicide, Trying)
"I'm laughing because I know the secret of life. And the secret of life is that I have validated my existence. I know that I am worth more than my house, my bank account, or any physical thing."
- Carlos Santana
(Related: Life, Bank account, Existence, Worth)
"Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment."
- George Santayana
(Related: Happiness, Life, Existence)
"The effort of art is to keep what is interesting in existence, to recreate it in the eternal."
- George Santayana
(Related: Art, Effort, Existence)
"The existence of any evil anywhere at any time absolutely ruins a total optimism."
- George Santayana
(Related: Time, Optimism, Evil, Existence)
"Existence precedes and rules essence."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: Existence, Rules)
"I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men."
- Jean-Paul Sartre
(Related: Men, Science, God, Existence)
"Whole areas of knowledge and information have been defined into nonexistence because the system cannot know, understand, control, or measure them."
- Anne Wilson Schaef
(Related: Knowledge, Control, Information, Measure)
"Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences."
- Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
(Related: Men, Existence)
"And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence."
- Friedrich Schleiermacher
(Related: Art, Existence, State)
"The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
(Related: Existence, Man)
"We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success."
- Arthur Schopenhauer
(Related: Success, Enemies, Existence, Friends, Regret)
"Israel is now sustaining a war for its own existence. A nation defending its citizens against terrorist bombings and a military and diplomatic onslaught by an array of Arab foes is practicing survival, not genocide."
- Jack Schwartz
(Related: War, Survival, Existence, Genocide, Israel, Military, Nation, Now)
"As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins."
- Albert Schweitzer
(Related: Thought, Existence, Man)
"One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation."
- Walter Scott
(Related: Men, Life, Action, Existence, Honor, Observation, Worth, Years)
"Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence."
- John Searle
(Related: Existence)
"Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
(Related: Life, Men, People, Existence, Observation)
"We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence... on pain of liquidation."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Existence, Pain, Years)
"Dualists hold that body and soul are separate entities and that the soul will continue beyond the existence of the physical body."
- Michael Shermer
(Related: Soul, Body, Existence, Will)
"Existence of an excited state is not a prerequisite for the production of inhibition; inhibition can exist apart from excitation no less than, when called forth against an excitation already in progress, it can suppress or moderate it."
- Charles Scott Sherrington
(Related: Progress, Existence, Production, State)
"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."
- Georg Simmel
(Related: Life, Culture, Existence, Individuality, Problems)
"Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs."
- Goldwin Smith
(Related: Existence, May)
"I'll remind you all, however, that for government, existence is a privilege, not a right."
- L. Neil Smith
(Related: Government, Existence, Privilege, Right)
"Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence."
- Sydney Smith
(Related: Happiness, Life, Love, Existence)
"With all our mastery over the powers of Nature we have adhered to the view that the struggle for existence is a permanent and necessary condition of life."
- Frederick Soddy
(Related: Life, Nature, Existence, Struggle)
"When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh."
- Todd Solondz
(Related: Truth, People, Existence, Hypocrisy, Laughter, Question, Trying, Want)
"I admit there's an element of brutality in all my work - it's part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore - but the last thing I'm trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people's pain and humiliation."
- Todd Solondz
(Related: Work, Truth, People, Existence, Pain, Trying, Want)
"Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future."
- Susan Sontag
(Related: Existence, Future, Past, Present)
"The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes."
- Madame de Stael
(Related: Connection, Existence, Faults, Mystery)
"Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens."
- Gertrude Stein
(Related: Women, Children, Existence, Vote)
"May my soul bloom in love for all existence."
- Rudolf Steiner
(Related: Love, Soul, Existence, May)
"The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence."
- Wallace Stevens
(Related: Existence)
"Even before I came to Chicago, I had gotten interested in the existence of dispersion of prices under conditions which economic theory said would yield a single price."
- George Stigler
(Related: Chicago, Existence, Theory, Yield)
"When the French nation gradually came into existence among the ruins of the Roman civilization in Gaul, a new language was at the same time slowly evolved."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Time, Civilization, Existence, Language, Nation)
"How far the existence of the Academy has influenced French literature, either for good or for evil, is an extremely dubious question."
- Lytton Strachey
(Related: Evil, Existence, Literature, Question)
"I couldn't care less about fashion. If I had taken any clothes home, they would have remained in my closet for the rest of their existence."
- Meryl Streep
(Related: Home, Care, Clothes, Existence, Fashion, Rest)
"The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence."
- Rabindranath Tagore
(Related: Education, Life, Existence, Harmony, Information)
"I'm not a Hollywood basher because enough good movies come out of the Hollywood system every year to justify its existence, without any apologies."
- Quentin Tarantino
(Related: Movies, Apologies, Existence, Hollywood)
"There's always been some moron-who usually went by the name of 'producer' - who would have to justify his existence, and interfere."
- Frank Tashlin
(Related: Existence, Name)
"Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt."
- Paul Tillich
(Related: Answers, Being, Existence, Hurt, Meaning, Question, Religious)
"Shiva danced the world into existence... that's a very nice thought."
- Michael Tippett
(Related: Thought, Existence, World)
"To advocate a New Order was to seek freedom and respect for peoples without prejudice, and to seek a stable basis for the existence all peoples, equally, and free of threats."
- Hideki Tojo
(Related: Existence, Freedom, Order, Prejudice, Respect)
"The Anarchists answer that the abolition of the State will leave in existence a defensive association, resting no longer on a compulsory but on a voluntary basis, which will restrain invaders by any means that may prove necessary."
- Benjamin Tucker
(Related: Existence, May, State, Will)
"The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement, explain American development."
- Frederick Jackson Turner
(Related: Development, American, Existence, Land)
"Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles."
- John Tyndall
(Related: Life, Existence, Moments)
"From wonder into wonder existence opens."
- Lao Tzu
(Related: Existence, Wonder)
"Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience."
- John Updike
(Related: Experience, Ecstasy, Existence)
"Playwrights are like men who have been dining for a month in an Indian restaurant. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus."
- Peter Ustinov
(Related: Men, Eating, Existence, Night)
"As long as man labors for a physical existence, though an act of necessity almost, he is yet natural; it is life, though that of this world, for which he instinctively works."
- Jones Very
(Related: Life, Act, Existence, Man, Necessity, World)
"Studying anthropology, I developed a kind of holistic view of human existence, in which the dichotomies you listed are all necessary and vital aspects of life."
- Joan D. Vinge
(Related: Life, Anthropology, Existence)
"In fact, there was general agreement that minds can exist on nonbiological substrates and that algorithms are of central importance to the existence of minds."
- Vernor Vinge
(Related: Agreement, Existence, Fact, Importance)
"What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking."
- Voltaire
(Related: Power, Idea, Soul, Existence, Feeling, Thinking)
"The very impossibility in which I find myself to prove that God is not, discovers to me his existence."
- Voltaire
(Related: God, Existence, Impossibility)
"Time is the most precious element of human existence. The successful person knows how to put energy into time and how to draw success from time."
- Denis Waitley
(Related: Success, Time, Successful, Energy, Existence)
"My country is in the grips of a major economic crisis. This is causing dramatic consequences for the very existence of Polish families. A permanent economic crisis in Poland may also have serious repercussions for Europe. Thus, Poland ought to be helped and deserves help."
- Lech Walesa
(Related: Consequences, Country, Crisis, Europe, Existence, Help, May)
"Until the building of Solomon's temple the unity of worship according to it had, properly speaking, never had any existence; and, moreover, it is easy to read between the lines that even after that date it was more a pious wish than a practical demand."
- Julius Wellhausen
(Related: Temple, Building, Existence, Unity, Worship)
"One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying."
- Morris West
(Related: Acceptance, Conflict, Court, Darkness, Doubt, Dying, Existence, Living, Needs, Pain, Will)
"Once you accept the existence of God - however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him - then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things."
- Morris West
(Related: God, Existence)
"In short, we cannot grow, we cannot achieve authentic discovery, and our eyes cannot be cleansed to the truly beautiful possibilities of life, if we simply live a neutral existence."
- Armstrong Williams
(Related: Life, Discovery, Existence, Eyes, Possibilities)
"Traveling to swimming meets took me beyond my small-town existence, gave me a hint of the exciting world outside of my own home."
- Esther Williams
(Related: Home, Existence, Traveling, World)
"You seem to think that the only genuine existence evil can have is conscious existence - that no one is evil unless he admits it to himself. I disagree."
- Gene Wolfe
(Related: Evil, Existence)
"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence."
- Tom Wolfe
(Related: Life, Men, Belief, Being, Conviction, Existence, Fact, Loneliness, Now)
"Religion may be defined thus: a belief in, and homage rendered to, existences unseen and causes unknown."
- Frances Wright
(Related: Religion, Belief, Causes, May)
"I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony."
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
(Related: Thought, Character, Depression, Existence, World)
"In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bis."
- John Wycliffe
(Related: Power, God, Knowledge, Church, Authority, Exercise, Existence, Man, Order)
"When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence."
- Gao Xingjian
(Related: Existence, Mind, Words, Writing)
"Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."
- Lin Yutang
(Related: People, Hope, Country, Existence, Road)
"Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence."
- Frank Zappa
(Related: Virtue, Existence, Fact, Support)
"What is a lie? It is to say what is real is not real. It is to deny the existence of what exists."
- Peter Nivio Zarlenga
(Related: Lie, Existence)