Only Existing Quotes & Sayings

I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink. — Ernest Hemingway,

There is a pre-existing harmony in everything. The problem is the human being. It may be true that one single Incarnation of God may not he able to bring that peace and harmony in the entire world. It's only because of that harmony that they could create in the world and in people's mind that the world still exists and that there is always a balance. Otherwise, things could be much worse. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail. — Bram Cohen

Our past is a story existing only in our minds. Look, analyze, understand, and forgive. Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it. — Marianne Williamson

Men become richer not only by increasing their existing wealth but also by decreasing their expenditure. — Aristotle.

He explained why an honest building, like an honest man, had to be of one piece and one faith; what constituted the life source, the idea in any existing thing or creature, and why - if one smallest part committed treason to that idea - the thing or the creature was dead; and why the good, the high and the noble on earth was only that which kept its integrity. — Ayn Rand

The competitive landscape of hedge funds is rapidly changing, as hundreds of funds are opened and closed every year. For example, Pensions & Investments reported that 784 new funds were started in 2009, while 1,023 existing funds were closed. Amazingly, the median life of a hedge fund is only 31 months. Fewer than 15 percent of hedge funds last longer than six years, and 60 percent of them disappear in less than three years.[3] — Gordon Murray

What do the few existing mystics still do?
They more or less mold the raw chaos of already existing religion. But only in an isolated, insignificant manner, through feeble attempts. Do it in a grand manner from all aspects with unified efforts, and let us awaken all religions from their graves, newly revivify and form the immortal ones through the omnipotence of art and science. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated "building blocks," but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object's interaction with the observer. — Fritjof Capra

I played the vina until my heart turned into the same instrument. Then I offered this instrument to the Divine Musician, the only muscian existing. Since then I have become His flute, and when He chooses He plays His music. The people give me credit for this music which, in reality, is not due to me, but to the Musician who plays his own instrument. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Trying to change someone only makes them cling to their existing behavior with brutish, primal force. — Brian D'Ambrosio

To stimulate optimal size and strength increases, it's imperative that you regularly attempt the momentarily impossible. For example, if you can curl 100 pounds for a maximum of 10 reps, but never attempt the 11th, your body has no reason to enlarge upon its existing capacity. It is only by regularly attempting to go beyond your existing capacity that inroads are made into your body's reserves. — Mike Mentzer

We only have a Plan A. The acceptance and full implementation of the existing plan, the so-called Plan A, is the best solution for Greece, for the euro zone and also for creditors and holders. — Evangelos Venizelos

Comics have a problem, and that is continuity - the obsession with placing the characters in an existing world, where every event is marked in canon. You're supposed to believe that these weepy star boys of now are the same gung-ho super teens fighting space monsters in the '60s, and they've only aged perhaps five years. — John Hodgman

I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now. But I only went to see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one human being, actually existing. I had to call on Anton Antonitch, however, on Tuesday - his at-home day; so I had always to time my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. — Milton Friedman

There have been applied sciences throughout the ages ... However this so-called practice was not much more than paper in nearly all of these cases, and the various applied sciences were only lacking a bagatelle, namely proper scientific practice. The applied sciences show the application of theoretic doctrines in existing events; but that is precisely what it does, it merely shows. Whereas the scientific practice autonomously puts to use these theories. — Christian Doppler

Identity politics instructs people to define their politics not by reference to general moral principles of justice and rights, but some shared experience of oppression. It divides people into myriad oppressed groups, each jockeying for power to secure its own interests against others - not put in place neutral rules that work for everyone (because such rules, in their thinking, only serve to entrench "existing power relations" and "structural marginalization"). — Shikha Dalmia

As believers in democracy we have not only the right but the duty to question existing mechanisms of, say, suffrage and to inquire whether some functional organization would not serve to formulate and manifest public opinion better than the existing methods. It is not irrelevant to the point that a score of passages could be cited in which Jefferson refers to the American Government as an experiment. — John Dewey

Then I get it, what it means. At least, for me. District 12 only has three existing victors to choose from. Two male. One female ...
I am going back into the arena. — Suzanne Collins

The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite. — Werner Heisenberg

Sean looks up at her, and he wants to explain it all to her. Explain what it's like to be rubbed so raw, to have your emotional threshold exceeded day after day, your psyche beaten so completely that you have no choice but to turn inward, shunning any and everything that's ever brought you comfort. He wants to explain that - up until the past month or so - he'd been existing in a black hole, a mental abyss that he only recently realized he put himself in.
But watching Lauren's face - the concern in her expression, so pure and complete, considering he's technically still a complete stranger - he realizes he doesn't have to explain anything. She knows what it's like. Everybody does. — Patrick Anderson Jr.

Forever only lasts for as long as it's allowed to, until something else steps in and stops it from existing. Although — Giovanna Fletcher

People wonder why there seems to be no meaning in life. Meaning does not exist a priori. There is no meaning existing in life; one has to create it. Only if you create it will you discover it. It has to be invented first. It is not lying there like a rock, it has to be created like a song. It is not a thing, it is significance that you bring through your consciousness. — Rajneesh

Much of the mystery surrounding drug action can be cleared up by recognizing that drugs affect only the rate at which biologic functions proceed; they do not change the basic nature of existing processes or create new functions. — Robert Berkow

One little thing led to another. One success, one particular challenge, could spur thoughts about another product, or a different iteration of an existing product, or a whole new channel of revenue. As Steve liked to say, "You can only connect the dots of how things really happened in hindsight. — Brent Schlender

The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet. — Jeremy Rifkin

A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic and social institutions, a holy force - the power of wisdom and love in action - is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism. — Andrew Harvey

Human knowledge as it actually is and can only ever be is not a revelation of something objectively and timelessly true, an assured grasp of something existing 'out there' independently of ourselves. It is what we have the best grounds at any given time for believing. Because this is what it is, it does indeed provide the best possible basis for our suppositions and actions. But it always remains our belief, our, conjecture, our hypothesis, our theory; and as such, fallible - and also, as such, a creation of the human mind. — Bryan Magee

Existing political philosophies all developed before evolutionary game theory, so they do not take equilibrium selection into account. Socialism pretends that individuals are not selfish sexual competitors, so it ignores equilibria altogether. Conservatism pretends that there is only one possible equilibrium - a nostalgic version of the status quo - that society could play. Libertarianism ignores the possibility of equilibrium selection at the level of rational social discourse, and assumes that decentralized market dynamics will magically lead to equilibria that yield the highest aggregate social benefits. Far from being a scientific front for a particular set of political views, modern evolutionary psychology makes most standard views look simplistic and unimaginitive. — Geoffrey Miller

Thus ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come.
The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of levelling. — Soren Kierkegaard

Those who reinforce the disintegrating elements in our society will get no thanks from future generations. The family becomes the ultimate victim of homosexuality, a result which any society can tolerate only within certain limits.

If the American Psychiatric Association endorses one of the symptoms of social distress as a normal phenomenon it demonstrates to the public its ignorance of social dynamics, of the relation of personal maladaptation to social disharmony, and thereby acquires a responsibility for aggravating the already existing chaos.
[response to December 15, 1973 verdict] — Abram Kardiner

Krandall had recently done a paper entitled "The Decline of Ford's Market Share," a serious, pessimistic warning that he had reason to believe had never reached Henry Ford. So Krandall, who was thinking of retiring anyway, seized this opportunity to confront a boss he rather liked. The Ford Company, he told Ford, was not equipped to deal with the Japanese challenge. Not only was it doing poorly, he said, but it might not be able to hold its existing share in the future. Krandall had suspected a short, testy answer, but instead Ford looked at him and agreed. "It may not be long," he said, "before we're selling not just cars but apples. — David Halberstam

Can currently existing religion be disentangled from the misogyny of its texts, its traditions, and its practices? ... a resounding NO: misogyny not only pervades the major faiths, it's baked in. — Katha Pollitt

Property taxes - particularly those which tax only or primarily the land and not the improvements - are the closest approximations we have today to community land contributions. For this reason, property taxes and home affordability rates - which is to say, land affordability rates - are inversely correlated.

Land contributions are necessary for the vitality of every community and city. For example, urban sprawl is a consequence of not capturing sufficient land contributions and thus enabling inefficient land use.

Community land contributions lead to a more intensive use of land and encourage the greening of a city's surroundings, as the existing population will tend to cluster closer together. Land contributions also encourage the restoration of blighted areas. — Martin Adams

Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change. — Pema Chodron

To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/ transform the world, they must change/ transform themselves. — Grace Lee Boggs

There is a story, always ahead of you. Barely existing. Only gradually do you attach yourself to it and feed it. You discover the carapace that will contain and test your character. You will find in this way the path of your life. — Michael Ondaatje

Science is not separate from politics. As much as I would like it to be a pure thing, existing only in some intellectual realm unsullied by human struggle, it will always be entangled with the world we live in. — Marie Brennan

Kangaroos give birth to only one baby at a time. So as soon as one baby is born, the female gets pregnant again. Otherwise the kangaroo population would never sustain itself. This means the female kangaroo spends her entire life either pregnant or nursing babies. If she's not pregnant, she's nursing babies; if she's not nursing babies, she's pregnant. You could say she exists just to ensure the continuance of the species. The kangaroo species wouldn't survive if there weren't any kangaroos, and if their purpose wasn't to go on existing, kangaroos wouldn't be around in the first place. — Haruki Murakami

A third reason scientists are reluctant to examine paranormal phenomena is that they appear to contradict known physical laws. What is the point of studying the impossible? Only a fool would waste his time. The problem of data in conflict with existing theory cannot be overstated. Arthur Eddington once said you should never believe any experiment until it has been confirmed by theory, but this humorous view has a reality that cannot be discounted. — Michael Crichton

Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts. — John Stossel

the existing market economy has no "stable" or "neutral" setting: there is only growth or contraction. — Richard Heinberg

There are regulations all over the spectrum that have to be done to the existing situation right now. But the only policy that makes sense is a nationwide moratorium: no new fracking, no new fracked wells. — Josh Fox

The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature — Graham Greene

Often there are players who have only football as a way of expressing themselves and never develop other interests. And when they no longer play football, they no longer do anything; they no longer exist, or rather they have the sensation of no longer existing. — Eric Cantona

There is no gainsaying the fact that this suggested program will strike most people as impossibly "radical" and "unrealistic"; any suggestion for changing the status quo, no matter how slight, can always be considered by someone as too radical, so that the only thoroughgoing escape from the charge of impracticality is never to advocate any change whatever in existing conditions. But to take this approach is to abandon human reason, and to drift in animal- or plant-like manner with the tide of events. — Murray N. Rothbard

The hypothesis is pretty; its only fault is that it is neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. Who does not see that this is purely arbitrary fiction that puts nothingness as existing and proposes nothing more than simple noncontradiciton? — Galileo Galilei

I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry. — Charlie Hunter

We can honestly say that everyone we've known who has used effective communication has been grateful for it in the long run. Often, effective communication brings about huge relief by showing you just how strongly your partner feels about you -- and by strengthening the bond between you two. And even though in some instances the response may not be what you hoped for and you'll be convinced that you've ruined everything -- if only you had said or done something else, he would surely have come around -- we've never heard anyone say in retrospect that they regretted raising an important issue in a dating or relationship setting. In fact, they overwhelmingly express gratitude that effective communication got them that one step closer to their long-term goal of either finding the right person or strengthening their existing bond. — Amir Levine & Rachel S.F. Heller

The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate: or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Jabotinsky insisted that all energies be expended to force the Congress to join the boycott movement. Nothing less than a 'merciless fight' would be acceptable, cried Jabotinsky. 'The present Congress is duty bound to put the Jewish problem in Germany before the entire world ... (We [Jews] must) destroy, destroy, destroy them, not only with the boycott, but politically, supporting all existing forces against them to isolate Germany from the civilized world ... our enemy [Germany] must be destroyed. — Ze'ev Jabotinsky

In the heart's deepest place, where the burden of ego is dropped and the mystery of soul is penetrated, a man finds the consciousness there not different in any way from what all other men may find. The mutuality of the human race is thus revealed as existing only on a plane where its humanness is transcended. This is why all attempts to express it in political and economic terms, no less than the theosophic attempts to form a universal brotherhood, being premature, must be also artificial. This is why they failed. — Paul Brunton

Vichy emerged not only from what divided the French but also what united them: pacifism, fear of population decline, loss of confidence in national identity, anti-Semitism, discontent with existing political institutions, ambivalence about modernity. The existence of this common — Julian T. Jackson

I wish to go down under the waters -
the cool, crystalline waters that I knew, where all
that is, here, existing, is
is only to be lost within the susurrations
and the rumours of water and the evening star
we wait for... — John Daniel Thieme

I'm not a techno-determinist. I believe we need to improve our existing human resources, and technology can only be a complement. — Shashi Tharoor

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power. — Leo Tolstoy

Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No
we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own. — Andrew Jackson

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. — Gustave Courbet

It is this law of love and its recognition as a rule of conduct in all our relations with friends, enemies and offenders which must inevitably bring about the complete transformation of the existing order of things,
not only among Christian nations, but among all the peoples of the globe — Leo Tolstoy

The bantering between them only caused their connection to spark that much more. Instead of forcing them to be at odds with each other, arguing did the opposite. It caused the flame to rise on the existing fire which churned inside of them, and they knew it and relished in the burn it created. There was a storm coming. As their desire intensified so did the turbulence of passion grow increasingly wild, demanding nothing less than consumption. — Madison Thorne Grey

Food is not evil, but gluttony is. Childbearing is not evil, but fornication is. Money is not evil, but avarice is. Glory is not evil, but vainglory is. Indeed, there is no evil in existing things, but only in their misuse. — Maximus The Confessor

The Carter Center has the only existing international taskforce on disease eradication. Which means a total elimination of a disease on the face of the Earth. In the history of the world, there's only been one disease eradicated: smallpox. The second disease, I think, is gonna be guinea worm. — Jimmy Carter

I am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd. — Edgar Allan Poe

Men lie only in two scenarios. One when
they have to hide their new girlfriend from the existing one(s) and second when they have to hide their income from the tax authorities. — Nitin Sharma

Ultimately, Roger learned only of the encounter with the urban bees. The boy remained thoroughly fascinated by what he heard nonetheless, his blue-eyed stare never once straying from Holmes; his visage passive and accepting, his eyes wide, Roger's pupils stated fixed on those venerable, reflective eyes, as though the boy were seeing distant lights shimmering along an opaque horizon, a glimpse of something flickering and alive existing beyond his reach. And, in turn, the gray eyes that focused sharply on him - piercing and kind at the same instant - endeavoured to bridge the lifetime that separated the two of them, attempting to do so as brandy was sipped, and the vial's glass grew warmer against soft palms, and that seasoned, well-lived voice somehow made Roger feel much older and more worldly than his years. — Mitch Cullin

In the sheltered simplicity of the first days after a baby is born, one sees again the magical closed circle, the miraculous sense of two people existing only for each other. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly. — D.H. Lawrence

We are to allow one thing to be really and truly distinct from the other, to be its own genuine self. There is a logical and philosophical urge in thinking men to reduce all things to a single unity. But this urge of the natural reason tends to petrify the heart. There is no single essence to which all existing things belong, no single essence which makes all things basically one. The only true unity of created things is the unity created by love. The heart embraces all things in their great variety and the heart loves them all. — Arnold Albert Van Ruler

You kissed me, and I opened my eyes and thought you were Death. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and I clung to the memory of you because it gave me comfort - the only bit of happiness I had ever had. You were my secret fantasy, my lover. My story ... Lord Death is you, and the woman he stalks ... is me."
"Why have you come," he asked, "when you now know the truth?"
"Because when you saved me, you forged a link between us. I don't believe it will ever break."
"Bella," he whispered, "I couldn't allow you to take your life. Couldn't bear the thought of existing in a world that you did not. — Charlotte Featherstone

For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother? — Orson Scott Card

To dwell in the place of God, as Evagrius puts it, is to live with a particular intense awareness of this reality, to know oneself not as a solitary, autonomous being but as one whose identity can only be conceived of as existing within an intricate web of encompassing relationships. The primary work of contemplative practice is to become more aware of this web of relationships, to learn to live within it fully and responsibly and to give expression to it in one's life. — Douglas E. Christie

For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes not the improvement of the existing society but the foundation of a new one. — Karl Marx

By no amount of reasoning can we altogether eliminate all contingency from our world. Moreover, pure speculation alone will not enable us to get a determinate picture of the existing world. We must eliminate some of the conflicting possibilities, and this can be brought about only by experiment and observation. — Morris Raphael Cohen

But the idea that God might want to change his mind is an example of the fallacy, pointed out by St. Augustine, of imagining God as a being existing in time: time is a property only of the universe that God created. — Stephen Hawking

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They open declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! — Karl Marx

A happening was looming. It was out there somewhere beyond the regular enclosed life that I had been living. It was out there, not waiting, but existing. Being. Perhaps it was only slightly wondering if I would come to it. — Markus Zusak

I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. — Paul Kalanithi

A condemned man who, at the hour of death, says or thinks that if the alternative were offered him of existing somewhere, on a height of rock or some narrow elevation, where only his two feet could stand, and round about him the ocean, perpetual gloom, perpetual solitude, perpetual storm, to remain there standing on a yard of surface for a lifetime, a thousand years, eternity! - rather would he live thus than die at once? Only live, live, live! - no matter how, only live! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The fact that the descent of the Quran led not only to the foundation of one of the world's great civilizations, but also to the creation of one of the major scientific, philosophical, and artistic traditions in global history was not accidental. Without the advent of the Quran, there would have been no Islamic sciences as we know them, sciences that were brought later to the West and we therefore would not have words such as "algebra," "algorithm," and many other scientific terms of Arabic origin in English. Nor would there be the Summas of St. Thomas Aquinas, at least in their existing form, since these Summas contain so many ideas drawn from Islamic sources. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Everything must have been fraudulent and pointless if thousands of years of civilization weren't even able to prevent this river of blood, couldn't stop these torture chambers existing in their hundreds of thousands. Only a military hospital can really show you what war is. — Erich Maria Remarque

The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water. — John Dewey

Really, when I think it over, literature has only one excuse for existing; it saves the person who makes it from the disgustingness of life. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than probability. He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves - whether they know clearly what it is they act upon or not. — Flannery O'Connor

Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes. — Terry Pratchett

The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived. Subject and object are only one. — Erwin Schrodinger

Some have argued that the current era of rapid technological progress serves labor, and some have argued that it serves capital. What both camps have slighted is the fact that technology is not only integrating existing sources of labor and capital but also creating new ones. — Anonymous

Women are called womanly only when they regard themselves as existing solely for the use of men. — George Bernard Shaw

Our liberties do not come from charters; for these are only the declaration of pre-existing rights. They do not depend on parchments or seals; but come from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the earth. — John Dickinson

Maybe we're here only to say: house,
bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window
at most, pillar, tower ... but to say them, remember,
oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves
never dreamed of existing so intensely. — Rainer Maria Rilke

There are three layers to the universe. In the lower, Tai Ching, and the middle, Shan Ching, the hindrance of a physical bodily existence is required. Those who fail to live consistently in accord with the Tao reside here. In the upper, Yu Ching, there is only Tao: the bondage of form is broken, and the only thing existing is the exquisite energy dance of the immortal divine beings. — Laozi

The American Medical Association not only represents the roughly 800,000 practicing physicians in the United States, but also sets the official standards for treatment for virtually every patient malady, and is instrumental in directing and controlling the supply of doctors entering medical school. By virtue of an affiliated licensing body called the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME), the AMA determines which medical schools receive its official accreditation, and for over a hundred years it has been very stingy with its approval process. Furthermore, the AMA together with its close affiliate, the American Association of Medical Colleges, conducts regular studies to assess the necessary supply of medical doctors and advises existing medical schools as well as state and federal regulators as to optimal admission levels for new students - and these too have been artificially and unnecessarily constricted[22]. — Reid Jenner

Sluka shook her head. We're talking about them in the past tense, and we never even discussed them in the present. It's like their only reason for existing was so they could die. — Alastair Reynolds

As I see it the world is undoubtedly in need of a new religion, and that religion must be founded on humanist principles. When I say religion, I do not mean merely a theology involving belief in a supernatural god or gods; nor do I mean merely a system of ethics, however exalted; nor only scientific knowledge, however extensive; nor just a practical social morality, however admirable or efficient. I mean an organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny, beyond and above the practical affairs of every day, transcending the present and the existing systems of law and social structure. The prerequisite today is that any such religion shall appeal potentially to all mankind; and that its intellectual and rational sides shall not be incompatible with scientific knowledge but on the contrary based on it. — Julian Huxley

I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ... that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a revelation from God ... that God did send His own Son to become man, die in the room and stead of sinners, and thus to lay a foundation for the offer of pardon and salvation to all mankind so as all may be saved who are willing to accept the Gospel offer. — Roger Sherman

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. — Robert M. Pirsig

Psychical life is neither unity nor multiplicity, that it transcends both the mechanical and the intellectual, mechanism and finalism having meaning only where there is "distinct multiplicity," "spatiality," and consequently assemblage of pre-existing parts: "real duration" signifies both undivided continuity and creation. — Henri Bergson

He who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new ... partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event. — Niccolo Machiavelli

When the proletariat declares the dissolution of the hitherto existing world order, it merely declares the secret of its own existence, since it is in fact the dissolution of this order. When it demands the negation of private property, it is only laying down as a principle for society what society has laid down as a principle for the proletariat, what has already been incorporated in itself without its consent as the negative result of society. — Karl Marx