Human Existence Quotes - Page 5

• 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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• 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

  Views, Study, Kind

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• How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

  Yann Martel

  Art, Self, Evil

  "Third time lucky" by Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. October 22, 2002.

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• How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence?

  R. D. Laing

  Giving, Our Actions, Who We Are

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• Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Practice, Development, Fields

  "The Mass Psychology of Fascism". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1933.

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• The Bhagavad Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe.

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Spiritual, Views, Foundation

  "A Tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and Wisdom Spanning Continents and Time about India and Her Culture". Book by Sushama Londhe, 2008.

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• Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Essence, Justice, Care

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.91, Stanford University Press

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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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• 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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• An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will reveal to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence in the arts of fiction and drama that life itself is little more than a series of coincidences.

  Rafael Sabatini

  Art, Drama, Intelligent

  Rafael Sabatini (2013). “Jolly Roger: Captain Blood PLUS the Sea Hawk”, p.114, DoctorZed Publishing

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• 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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• 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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• I don't see gender as the most significant fact of human existence.

  Jim Harrison

  Literature, Facts, Gender

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. June 7, 2004.

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• The advantage of pure, and the disadvantage of impure air are experienced each time we breathe, and all who understand the causes of disease know that an impure atmosphere is most unfavourable to the enjoyment of health, and an efficient cause to shorten human existence within the natural life of man. It is therefore most desirable that decisive measures should be devised and generally adopted to ensure to all a pure atmosphere, in which to live during their lives.

  Robert Owen

  Men, Air, Atmosphere

  "The Book of the New Moral World, Vol. 3". Book by Robert Owen, 1836-1844.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The need for mythic statements is satisfied when we frame a view of the world which adequately explains the meaning of human existence in the cosmos, a view which springs from our psychic wholeness, from the co-operation between conscious and unconscious. Meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore equivalent to illness. Meaning makes a great many things endurable - perhaps everything.

  Carl Jung

  Spring, Fullness Of Life, Views

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• [I]n contrast to the common belief that they are the world's greatest cynics, the best journalists are the world's great idealists. They have experienced firsthand the great soothing balance of human existence. For every disgrace there is triumph, for every wrong there is a moment of justice, for every funeral a wedding, for every obituary a birth announcement.

  Anna Quindlen

  Justice, Funeral, Balance

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• With reason, then, the common opinion of mankind, little affected by the few dissentients who have contended for the opposite view, has found in the careful study of nature, and in the laws of nature, the foundations of the division of property, and the practice of all ages has consecrated the principle of private ownership, as being pre-eminently in conformity with human nature, and as conducing in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Wisdom, Views, Law

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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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