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Existence Quotes

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Existence Quotes

“In our constant search for meaning in this baffling and temporary existence, trapped as we are within our three pounds of neurons, it is sometimes hard to tell what is real. We often invent what isn't there. Or ignore what is. We try to impose order, both in our minds and in our conceptions of external reality. We try to connect. We try to find truth. We dream and we hope. And underneath all of these strivings, we are haunted by the suspicion that what we see and understand of the world is only a tiny piece of the whole.”

WorldTryingMindRealSometimesHardWholeDreamRealityOrderThreeExistencePiecesConstantStriveTinyPoundsTemporaryConceptionTrappedSuspicionSearch For MeaningNeurons
Book:The Accidental Universe: The World You Thought You Knew
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“For me, spirituality includes the belief in things larger than ourselves, an appreciation of nature and beauty, a sensitivity to the world, a feeling of shared connection with other living things, a desire to help people less fortunate than ourselves. All of these things can occur with or without God. I do not believe in the existence of God, but I consider myself a spiritual person in the manner I have just described. I call myself a spiritual atheist. I would imagine that many people are spiritual atheists.”

PeopleWorldBelievePersonsHelpingFeelingsSpiritualDesireSpiritualityBeliefExistenceImagineConnectionsAtheistAppreciationFortunateImagine ThatSensitivityLiving ThingsWithout GodExistence Of GodLess FortunateNature And Beauty
Author:Alan Lightman
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“The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.”

IfsShouldGovernmentIndividualBeliefProcessViewsExistenceOpinionDemocracyIdealsDirectIndependentMajorityMake SenseConceptionSpheresSpontaneousMajority Opinion
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“A law which excludes all dialectic and all reconciliation; which establishes, consequently, both the flawless unity of knowledge and the uncompromising division of tragic existence; it rules over a world without twilight, which knows no effusion, nor the attenuated cares of lyricism; everything must be either waking or dream, truth or darkness, the light of being or the nothingness of shadow.”

KnowsWorldDreamLightCareLawExistenceDarknessShadowUnityTragicDivisionWakingTwilightNothingnessReconciliationFlawlessUncompromisingDialectics
Author:Michel Foucault
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“This is exactly the message that fairy tales get across to the child in manifold form: that a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence -- but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.”

IfsLifeHumansChildrenDoeEndsMotivationalFormLife IsExistenceStruggleMastersVictoryMessagesDifficultyAdversityObstaclesTalesUpliftingFairyHard TimesUnexpectedShyHardshipFairy TaleSevereUnjustEncouragingTough TimesOvercoming AdversityHuman ExistenceFairytaleWords Of EncouragementManifold
Book:The uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales
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“The university is well structured, well tooled, to turn out people with all the sharp edges worn off, the well-rounded person. The university is well equipped to produce that sort of person, and this means that the best among the people who enter must for four years wander aimlessly much of the time questioning why they are on campus at all, doubting whether there is any point in what they are doing, and looking toward a very bleak existence afterward in a game in which all of the rules have been made up, which one cannot really amend.”

PeopleYearsWellsMeanPersonsHas BeensMadeTurnsGamesExistenceDoubtFourProduceUniversityEdgesWanderFour YearsQuestioningWornCampusBleakWell RoundedSharp EdgesQuestioning Why
Author:Mario Savio
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“Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.”

WorldHumansEndsPhilosophyUseHandsPurposeExistenceWonderSolutionsPhilosophicalTheologyRemoveAffirmationHuman ExistenceContingency
Book:In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays
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“Lichtenberg ... held something of the following kind: one should neither affirm the existence of God nor deny it. ... It is not that he wished to leave certain perspectives open, nor to please everyone. It is rather that he was identifying himself, for his part, with a consciousness of self, of the world, and of others that was "strange" (the word is his) in a sense which is equally well destroyed by the rival explanations.”

WorldShouldWellsKindSelfCertainExistenceConsciousnessStrangePerspectivePleaseFollowingDenyDestroyedExplanationRivalsIdentifyingExistence Of God
Author:Maurice Merleau-Ponty
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“Even the Atheists... readily acknowledge it for an indubitable truth, that there must be something... which was never made or produced - and which therefore is the cause of those other things that are made, something... whose existence must needs be necessary... Wherefore all the question now is, what is this... self-existent thing, which is the cause of all other things that are made.”

NeedsMadeSelfCausesExistenceAtheismAtheistAcknowledge
Author:Ralph Cudworth
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“The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world - the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.”

IfsMenWorldFirstsWarRealPoliticalNationsSocialGoalPartyCommonExistenceStepsClassEconomicRepublicanBasesDenyCorporateAcknowledgeElitesFirst StepsNurtureRepublican PartyPolitical SystemsCommon ManGopSocial ClassBacklashCorporate WorldClass System
Author:Thomas Frank
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“The investor has the benefit of the stock market's daily and changing appraisal of his holdings, 'for whatever that appraisal may be worth', and, second, that the investor is able to increase or decrease his investment at the market's daily figure - 'if he chooses'. Thus the existence of a quoted market gives the investor certain options which he does not have if his security is unquoted. But it does not impose the current quotation on an investor who prefers to take his idea of value from some other source.”

IfsGivingMayDoeIdeasAbleCertainValuesExistenceSecurityFiguresSourceBenefitsIncreaseInvestmentCurrentsInvestorsQuotationsDecreaseAppraisal
Author:Benjamin Graham
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“I don't enjoy the diminishing agility of the body!I had knee surgery and I no longer can go do three yoga classes and run. It's not as much fun, physically. But emotionally, it's way more fun. I am so much happier and contented and less agitated - I'm just calmer. So it's like everything in this human existence, it's a trade off - it's like you trade the virility of the body for the agility of the spirit. That's a good line. I have to remember that!”

WayHumansBodyRunningRememberSpiritThreeFunEnjoyLinesExistenceClassLike YouYogaTradeKneesSurgeryHuman ExistenceAgilityTrade OffsCalmer
Author:Elizabeth Lesser
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“Someone in the society has to deal with the reality that there are finite resources and we're making trade-offs, and be explicit about that. When the car companies were found to have a memo that actually said, "This safety feature costs X and saved Y lives," the very existence of that memo was considered damning. Or when you made it reimbursable for a doctor to ask, "Do you want heroic care at the end-of-life," that was a death panel. No, it wasn't a death panel! It was asking somebody to make a decision.”

WantMadeSaidEndsRealityCareAsksFoundDecisionDealsExistenceCompanyCarCostResourcesDoctorsAskingSafetyTradeSavedMade ItFeaturesHeroicFiniteEnd Of LifeExplicitTrade OffsMemos
Author:Bill Gates
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“The black middle-class in America is a prosperous community that is now larger in absolute terms than the black underclass. Does its existence not suggest that economic adversity is the result of failures of individual character rather than the lingering after-effects of racial discrimination and a slave system that ceased to exist well over a century ago?”

WellsDoeCharacterAmericaIndividualBlackTermCommunityResultsExistenceClassEconomicMiddleEffectsCenturyAbsolutesAdversitySlaveDiscriminationMiddle ClassProsperousLingeringRacial Discrimination
Author:David Horowitz
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“Canada has an experience of governance of which much of the world stands in dire need. It is a world of increasing dissension and conflict in which a significant contribution is the failure of different ethnic, tribal, religious, or social groups to search for, and agree upon, a common space for harmonious co-existence.”

WorldNeedsDifferentSocialReligiousSpaceCommonExistenceGroupsConflictAgreeSignificantContributionCanadaGovernanceHarmoniousDissensionSocial GroupsAgree Upon
Author:Aga Khan IV
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“With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition.”

KnowsExistencePathOne ThingConditionsSubjectsLimitsDesertTruthfulnessDisintegration
Book:Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity
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“Now if you ask me, in conclusion, "Well, what, then should properly be done?" Obviously war, but I mean in regard to this issue I would say: Any way possible permission should be refused and if they go ahead and build it, the government should bomb it out of existence, evacuating it first, with no compensation to any of the property owners involved in this monstrosity.”

IfsWayShouldFirstsWellsMeanWarDoneGovernmentAsksExistenceIssuesInvolvedRegardPropertyConclusionAsk MeBombsOwnersPermissionCompensationMonstrosity
Author:Leonard Peikoff
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“A bizarrerie of fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.”

BookLightSongBlackBehindsExistenceDarknessFirePiecesBuildingWindPagesShotsEmptyMovedFilledNotesStormEveningDesertStillnessAshesTruestDeliberationCadenceFlareSwirlsDaintyUnread BooksPrancing
Book:Frost and Fire
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“I, who had been in favour of nuclear energy for generating electricity ... I suddenly realised that anybody who has a nuclear reactor can extract the plutonium from the reactor and make nuclear weapons, so that a country which has a nuclear reactor can, at any moment that it wants to, become a nuclear weapons power. And I, right from the beginning, have been terribly worried by the existence of nuclear weapons and very much against their use.”

WantHas BeensCountryMomentsUseEnergyExistenceWeaponsNuclearWorriedNuclear WeaponsElectricityFavourRealisedNuclear EnergyPlutoniumNuclear Reactors
Author:Mark Oliphant
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