April 2011
62 posts
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“Just because you wander in the desert, it does not mean there is a promised land.”
— The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster (Submitted by adayinmarch)
“Our intellectual grasp extends throughout the cosmos, and has brought to light...”
– Stephen Toulmin (via human-voices)
“If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we...”
– Erich Fromm (via human-voices)
Although in an abstract way he disapproves of cruelty, he cannot tell whether by nature he is cruel or kind. He is simply nothing. He assumes that people from whom cruelty is demanded in the line of duty, people who work in slaughterhouses, for instance, grow carapaces over their souls. Habit hardens: it must be so in most cases, but it does not seem to be so in his. He does not seem to have the...
“Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is...”
– Prof. Louis Levi (Submitted by menteparalela)
“Ideology makes it unnecessary for people to confront individual issues on their...”
– Daniel Bell (via New Yorker)
Does Objective Reality Exist, or is the Universe a...
“If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected.The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky. Everything interpenetrates...
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“It will be no excuse to an idle and untoward servant who would not attend his...”
– John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690).
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“Wherever I go in the world people ask me “Do aliens exist?” It’s a good question...”
– Stephen Hawking - “Into The Universe” (via cwnl)
“He walked out into the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the...”
– Cormac McCarthy. The Road (Submitted by tophersaurus)
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Deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could have...
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“Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have...”
– Tom Stoppard, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead” (Submitted by freunde-nicht-diese-toene)
Chuang Tse: XXII (quoted in The Lathe of Heaven by...
“Starlight asked Non-Entity, ‘Master, do you exist? or do you not exist?’ he got no answer to his question, however… .”
(Submitted by g-is-for-gaijin)
“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from...”
– Walt Whitman
“Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.”
– Erich Fromm (Submitted by woquinoncoin)
“But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing...”
– Richard Feynman (via ageofreason)
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“A tranquility so casual and thoughtless seemed almost effortlessly to give the...”
– Albert Camus The Plague (via dimebaglove)
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Is that all there is?
I remember when i was a girl our house caught on fire and i’ll never forget the look on my father’s face as he gathered me in his arms and raced to the burning building out on the pavement and i stood there shivering and watched the whole world go up in flames and when it was all over I said to myself — is that all there is to a fire? Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that’s all...
"I see no God up here"
[Ref]
This has been reported as a remark Gagarin made while in orbit aboard Vostok 1, but there is no indication of it in the official transcripts of his communications. It is similar to the statements he reportedly made after his return to earth, which might have given rise to this account. It is almost certain that this was a quote created by and distributed by Soviet propaganda to sponsor...
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“You say life is just life, a simple act of accidental possession in the hands of...”
– The Outsider, Richard Wright
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“The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost...”
– Carl Sagan (via laplumeabelle)
“I no longer know where I am. I know. I am nowhere. Here.”
– Edmond Jabès, The Book of Questions: Volume I [The Book of Yukel, Return to the Book], translated by Rosmarie Waldrop (via ratak-monodosico)
“To be existential is to have those dark nights of the soul when the loneliness...”
– George Cotkin, Existential America (Submitted by calvinmarkus)
“This: ‘Most men will not swim before they are able to.’ Is not that witty?...”
– Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf (Submitted by -luftschloss)
“Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the...”
– André Maurois (via fuckyeahsolitude)
“I’m even inclined to believe that the best definition of man is—a creature who...”
– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
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“Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is complete...”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life (via adsertoris)
“There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one...”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life (via adsertoris)
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a...”
– Carl Jung (via thelittlesea)
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“Oh, you may be perfectly sure that if Columbus was happy, it was not after he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it! You may be quite sure that he reached the culminating point of his happiness three days before he saw the New World with his actual eyes, when his mutinous sailors wanted to tack about, and return to Europe! What did the New World matter after all? ...
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“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human...”
– Viktor Frankl (via zenlikeme)
“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully...”
– Tom Robbins (via oceanofmind)
“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.”
– Federico Fellini (via jesuisperdu) 