Human Existence Quotes - Page 10

• Death is not the greatest tragedy in life. The greatest tragedy is what dies inside us while we live. We need not fear death. We need fear only that we may exist without having sensed something of the possibilities that lie within human existence.

  Norman Cousins

  Lying, Tragedy, Needs

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• The problem of money dogs our steps throughout the whole of our lives, exerting a pressure that, in its way, is as powerful and insistent as any other problem of human existence. And it haunts the spiritual search as well.

  Jacob Needleman

  Spiritual, Dog, Powerful

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• But even if ego-death is regarded as the optimum model for human existence, one of liberation from ourselves, it still remains a compromise with being, a concession to the blunder of creation itself. We should be able to do better, and we can. To have our egos killed off is second-best to killing off death and all the squalid byplay that flitters around it. So let all lands be small, and grower smaller and smaller until no lands are left where any human footstep need press itself upon the earth.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Land, Ego, Needs

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• Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.

  Milan Kundera

  Kitsch, Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Existence

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, translated by Michael Henry Heim, (Part Six: The Grand March), 1984.

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• There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize.

  Milan Kundera

  Philosophy, Problem, Metaphysical

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• I see love, like art, as an obsession. Maybe that's an overly romantic view of human existence, but I'm an overly romantic human being. If love, like rock and roll, doesn't consume me 24-7, it's not love. It can be respect, appreciation, admiration, wonderment, it can be a world of glory and a lifetime of peace, but I can't call it love. Love burns me and confuses me. Love's a light that can't be extinguished.

  Scott Weiland

  Appreciation, Art, Light

  Scott Weiland (2011). “Not Dead & Not for Sale: A Memoir”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• These three things-work, will, success-fill human existences. Will opens the door to success, both brilliant and happy. Work passes these doors, and at the end of the journey success comes in to crown one's efforts.

  Louis Pasteur

  Success, Journey, Doors

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• Our present ecological crisis, the biggest single practical threat to our human existence in the middle to long term, has, religious people would say, a great deal to do with our failure to think of the world as existing in relation to the mystery of God, not just as a huge warehouse of stuff to be used for our convenience.

  Rowan Williams

  Religious, Thinking, Long

  Rowan Williams (2007). “Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief”, p.50, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• Speak the truth.
  Speak it loud and often, calmly but insistently,
  and speak it, as the Quakers say, to power.
  Material accumulation is not the purpose of human existence.
  All growth is not good.
  The environment is a necessity, not a luxury.
  There is such a thing as enough.

  Donella Meadows

  Luxury, Growth, Purpose

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• Jesus came to reveal God to us. He is the defining word on God—on what the heart of God is truly like, on what God is up to in the world, and on what God is up to in your life. An intimate encounter with Jesus is the most transforming experience of human existence. To know him as he is, is to come home. To have his life, joy, love, and presence cannot be compared. A true knowledge of Jesus is our greatest need and our greatest happiness. To be mistaken about him is the saddest mistake of all.

  John Eldred

  Jesus, Mistake, Home

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• The purpose of human existence is to learn and to understand as much as we can of what came before us, so we can further the sum total of human knowledge in our life.

  Erik Naggum

  Purpose, Existence, Humans

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• The best society, the best human existence, arrives when humans most closely determine the truth, and act on the truth, and separate it from superstition, falsity, or misinformation. And there is no better system for determining the truth than free speech: Testing the validity of an idea in the waters of public discussion and debate.

  Dave Rodgers

  Truth, Ideas, Water

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• 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

  Dream, Sex, Sight

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• We declare that only man exists. This is not to say that material, inorganic nature and nonhuman beings-animals and plants-are in any sense unreal, insubstantial, or illusory because they do not so exist. We merely state that the reality of these nonhuman realms differs from that of human existence, whose primary characteristic is Da-sein (literally being-the-there)... Man as man is present... in a manner wholly different from... inanimate things.

  Medard Boss

  Animal, Reality, Men

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• If man did not exist as a world-spanning receptive realm of perception, if he were not engaged in this capacity, nothing at all could exist. 'Being,' in its traditional usage, means 'presence' and 'persistence.' To achieve presence, and thereby being, an entity requires some sort of open realm in which presence and persistence can take place. Thus an open realm of perception like that of human existence is the one being that makes being possible.

  Medard Boss

  Mean, Persistence, Men

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• Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I was little I've liked Russian literature, but I find that I like Dostoevsky the best and had long thought that this book would make a wonderful film. He is still my favourite author, and he is the one - I still think - who writes most honestly about human existence.

  Akira Kurosawa

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.

  Alice Miller

  Ocean, Ignorance, Evil

  Alice Miller (2012). “Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries”, p.139, Anchor

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• Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence...faith.

  Serj Tankian

  Elements, Failing, Existence

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• This future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself.

  Hannah

  Men, Years, Free Gifts

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• To have a firm persuasion in our work - to feel that what we do is right for ourselves and good for the world at exactly the same time - is one of the great triumphs of human existence.

  David Whyte

  Triumph, World, Persuasion

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• One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.

  Dean Koontz

  People, Sorrow, Alive

  Dean Koontz (2003). “Lightning”, p.24, Penguin

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• Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man's human existence.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Men, Civilization

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• Spirituality is the intersection of three paths: letting go of ego, an unconditional yes to the conditions of human existence, and an immeasurable compassion.

  David Richo

  Letting Go, Compassion, Ego

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• 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

  Giving, Community, Mental Health

  Sir Arthur Keith (1947). “Evolution and Ethics”

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• Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.

  Thomas Merton

  Keys, Finals, Answers

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.130, New Directions Publishing

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