Human Existence Quotes - Page 3

• We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.

  Adrienne Rich

  Children, New Relationship, Motherhood

  Adrienne Rich (1976). “Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution”

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• Death is an unsurpassable limit of human existence... We discover the relationship which is the basis for all feelings of reverence, fear, awe, wonder, sorrow, and deference in the face of something greater and more powerful... Only such a being-unto-death can guarantee the precondition that the Da-sein be able to free itself from its absorption in, its submission and surrender of itself to the things and relationships of everyday living and to return to itself.

  Medard Boss

  Powerful, Feelings, Everyday

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• My ultimate research goal is to transform our human existence to just eating, sleeping, drinking, playing - nevermind.

  Luis von Ahn

  Drinking, Sleep, Goal

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• The Light of one human being who discovers the Truth has been lighting human existence for thousands of years. Such is the power of a human being who realizes the Truth of who they are.

  Mooji

  Light, Years, Realizing

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• WE DIE. You will never hear those words spoken in a television ad. Yet this central fact of human existence colors our world and how we perceive ourselves within it.

  Christopher Locke

  Death, Color, Our World

  Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls (2009). “The Cluetrain Manifesto”, p.73, Basic Books

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• Human language has a vocabulary suited to our daily needs and functions: the shape of any human language maps approximately to the needs and activities of our mundane lives. But few would deny that there is another dimension of human existence which transcends the mundane: call it the soul, the spirit: it is that part of the human frame which sees the shimmer of the numinous.

  Julian Burnside

  Communication, Vocabulary, Media

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• Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

  Milan Kundera

  Reason, Fragments, Existence

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• The suckling relationship is one of the sources of real sweetness that we have in human existence...The suckling baby can teach adults about the expression of sweet love and gratitude in a way no words can.

  Ina May Gaskin

  Baby, Gratitude, Sweet

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• The act of creation is a kind of ritual. The origins of art and human existence lie hidden in this mystery of creation. Human creativity reaffirms and mystifies the power of 'life.

  Keith Haring

  Art, Lying, Creativity

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• Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

  Henri Nouwen

  Prayer, Existence, Decoration

  Henri Nouwen (2013). “The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society”, p.17, Image

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• I am persuaded to think that any climate change is bad because of the investments and adaptations that have been made by human beings and all of the things that support human existence upon this globe. Even minor fluctuations of climate could change the distribution of fish, … upset agriculture,…and inundate costal cities…… Such changes could occur at a faster rate perhaps than human society can evolve.

  Fred Singer

  Thinking, Agriculture, Cities

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• 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

  Rights, Years, Two

  Joseph McCabe (1929). “The Story of Religious Controversy”

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• I like to think there is something deep in our own world of reality that will create a dynamic balance between technology and human existence, the relationship between which has a decisive effect on contemporary cultural forms and social structure.

  Kenzo Tange

  Technology, Reality, Thinking

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• Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.

  Friedrich Engels

  Men, Political, Next

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1968). “Selected works [of] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels”

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• People invent new machines and improve existing ones almost unconsciously, rather as a Somnambulist will go walking in his sleep. The interesting puzzle in our times is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the conditions of human existence.

  George Orwell

  Sleep, People, Interesting

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• Socialism, communism, literally kills the lifeblood of opportunity and energy and creativity because there is no outlet for it, and yet all of those things are a natural part of the human existence, desire, ambition, energy, creation. We all have those things in different amounts, different allocations. And they change.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Creativity, Ambition, Opportunity

  Source: origin-www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• If the spiritual values of human existence at its highest term of development and achievement do not endure, amidst all the changes and chances of this mortal universe, there seems to be no stable or coherent meaning in existence. Then the universe is irrational--indeed it is no universe at all.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Spiritual, Achievement, Development

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1922). “Man and the Cosmos - An introduction to Metaphysics.”

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• Pragmatism , in trying to turn experimental physics into a prototype of all science and to model all spheres of intellectual life after the techniques of the laboratory, is the counterpart of modern industrialism, for which the factory is the prototype of human existence, and which models all branches of culture after production on the conveyor belt.

  Max Horkheimer

  Intellectual, Trying, Culture

  Max Horkheimer (2004). “EPZ Eclipse of Reason”, p.35, A&C Black

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• At every stage, addiction is driven by one of the most powerful, mysterious, and vital forces of human existence. What drives addiction is longing--a longing not just of brain, belly, or loins but finally of the heart.

  Cornelius Plantinga

  Powerful, Heart, Addiction

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• There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.

  Clarice Lispector

  Sea, Existence, Humans

  Clarice Lispector (1989). “Soulstorm: Stories”, p.162, New Directions Publishing

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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!

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Running, Fun, Yoga

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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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.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Hands

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1988). “In Praise of Philosophy and Other Essays”, p.44, Northwestern University Press

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• Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Self, Understanding, Consciousness

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964). “Signs”, p.203, Northwestern University Press

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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.

  Bruno Bettelheim

  Life, Motivational, Encouraging

  Bruno Bettelheim (1976). “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales”, Vintage

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• Learning, like love, death and eating, are fundamental human activities. It's at the core of human existence and its character has a resilience of continuity that is part of what makes up human nature. That is not fundamentally going to change.

  Leon Botstein

  Character, Like Love, Resilience

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