Question The Very Existence Quotes & Sayings

For millennia, man remained what he was for Aristotle: a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence; modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question — Michel Foucault

Did I really want predictability? Did I want a never-ending routine that, while always resulting in pleasure, never altered, never faltered? Was he even capable of failing? And with that question, had I truly believed that the possibility of failure was a bad thing? Wasn't risk the very marrow of life? Never knowing what you were going to get ... or how? Never knowing whether it was going to change your entire existence or leave you dejected? — Jennifer DeLucy

The question 'Why poetry?' isn't asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: "What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that's unutterable?" You can't generalize very usefully about poetry; you can't reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can't successfully answer the question of "Why poetry?," can't reduce it in the way I think you can't, then maybe that's the strongest evidence that poetry's doing its job; it's creating an essential need and then satisfying it. — Richard Ford

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place. — Phillip E. Johnson

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life. — Diogenes Laertius

The Lord says that "truth is knowledge of things as they are and as they were, and as they are to come" (Sec. 93.) Some of our brethren in writing, and a good many in talking, say truth is the knowledge, or a knowledge of things. . . . The insertion of a or the is a mistake. Truth is knowledge itself, information, intelligence, things that are, things that were, things that are to come--knowledge concerning them. That is truth. It is a splendid definition and answers the question of ages more clearly than anything I have ever heard attempted; even better than "truth the sum of existence," and yet the two in meaning are identical. Now, let us be correct in that little thing, and so in all things that pertain to our doctrines, our duties in the Priesthood, brethren, and in our quotations of scripture let us try to be right, as nearly correct as we can. — Charles W. Penrose

I realise and finally acknowledge that at the core I am only a lover. Of life. Of beauty. Of love. Of being in love. Of kindness. Of words. Of conversations. Of dreams. Of imagination. Of ideas. Of realness. Of vulnerability. Of solitude. Of Silences. Of companionship. Of poetry. Of music. Of movement. Of stillness. Of energy. And, when the lover in me is stifled,starved, not finding resonance, is misunderstood, is dulled or ignored, I question my very existence because I do not feel alive. When the lover in me dies, everything in me dies. I realise that my inner fire is only a lover. I have no other identity of self than as a lover. — Srividya Srinivasan

The question is, How can you see the divine intersection of all that shapes and marks your existence, whether it be the heart-wrenching tragedies that wound you or the ecstasy of a great delight that brings laughter to your soul? How can you meet God in all your appointments and your disappointments? How can you recognize that he has a purpose, even when all around seems senseless, if not hopeless? Will there be a last gasp that whispers in one word a conclusion that redefines everything? If so, is it possible to borrow from that word to enrich the now? Can we really see, even a little, the patterned convergence of everything into some grand design? — Ravi Zacharias

On the one hand we need the image of "the text" in order to focus on anything at all; on the other hand we use the metaphor of "reading" to signal that our apprehension of a text will always be partial, that we never quite reach the "text itself," a realization that has led certain critics to question the very existence of such an object. — Espen J. Aarseth

Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, except uncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze of theories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but a fog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all its wonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, that seeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the most honest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that he must even doubt his very existence. — Olaf Stapledon

Our own theory is that sin was ordained only in view of redemption, and that accordingly redemption shows forth as the gain bound up with sin; in comparison with which there can be no question whatever of mischief due to sin, for the merely gradual and imperfect unfolding of the power of the God-consciousness is one of the necessary conditions of the human stage of existence. — Friedrich Schleiermacher

The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point of a needle cut a very poor figure as far as romantic credulity is concerned beside the modern physicists who have settled to the billionth of a millimetre every movement and position in the dance of the electrons. Not for worlds would I question the precise accuracy of these calculations or the existence of electrons (whatever they may be). The fate of Joan is a warning to me against such heresy. — George Bernard Shaw

To get inspiration, go to the nature; for silence, go to the nature; to question the meaning of life, go to the nature; to feel the existence, go to the nature; to protect your mind, to reach the truth, to think about the universe go to the nature! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

'What was there before the Big Bang?' That's a question that both kids and adults love to pose to anyone who seems sympathetic. After all, if the universe has only been around for roughly 14 billion years, isn't it legitimate to ask what was in existence before the mother-of-all-events cranked up the cosmos? — Seth Shostak

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Reverend Easter waved her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter to God what we call ourselves, or even what we call Him. We're the only ones who care about that. But as an Episcopalian and not an evangelical," she said, with a knowing look at Hannah, "I'll answer your question with another question, or rather, with a bunch of them, which is how we tend to do things. How else do you explain the miracle of your beating heart, the compassion of strangers, the existence of Mozart and Rilke and Michelangelo? How do you account for redwoods and hummingbirds, for orchids and nebulas? How can such beauty possibly exist without God? And how can we see it and know it's beautiful and be moved by it, without God?" Hannah — Hillary Jordan

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." There — G.K. Chesterton

Definitions must contain the means of reaching a decision in a finite number off steps, and existence proofs must be conducted so that the quantity in question can be calculated with any degree of accuracy. — Leopold Kronecker

So when did these last two originate? They transcend "whenness," but if I must give a naive answer - when the Father did. When was that? There has not been a "when" when the Father has not been in existence. This, then, is true of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Put another question and I will answer it. Since when has the Son been begotten? Since as long as the Father has not been begotten. — Gregory Of Nyssa

And some scientists and other intellectuals are convinced - too eagerly in my view - that the question of God's existence belongs in the forever inaccessible PAP category. From this, as we shall see, they often make the illogical deduction that the hypothesis of God's existence, and the hypothesis of his non-existence, have exactly equal probability of being right. — Richard Dawkins

His only thought now was the question in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and consequently, with most justice, shake off the mud with which she had splattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honourable, and useful existence. — Leo Tolstoy

Those who are driven by poverty, those who're free from material worries hunger exhausting labor a joyless existence ask the same question, the question of meaning. — Kathy Acker

During our religious instruction in school, we always asked: How can one prove the existence of God? And I have learned that the Catholic Church, which is never at a loss for an answer when it comes to existential questions, responds as follows: This question simply does not arise. — Jean-Claude Juncker

Science does not see beyond the atom interacting with atom, the chemicals interacting with chemicals. The scientist cannot see the impressive existence of himself. Academics will never learn the meaning of life because they don't feel it; they can only accept its existence as fact. "I think therefore I am." And yet, thought is a cloud reflecting the impressions of a consciousness. I am therefore I think. The academic mind does not appreciate life in the festive sense therefore - derailed to love by a numb perspective. Life is an unknown, death is a mystery; no, life is a mystery, death is the unknown - in the sense that I will un-know my self in death. Science ignores the ultimate question in pursuance of the distant things, the most superficial things. One must discover from the inside out to discover he is made of nothing, and in that supreme emptiness, he is connected directly to everything that he studies. — Matthew Holbert

Each time, we ask, "Who am I?", we answer the question differently. Our identity evolves, as it is the sum of our thoughts, words and deeds. To be ourselves, we have to remember ourselves, which makes our very identity conditional. Each time we remember, we reaffirm our individuality. Our existence as an independent person depends on it, but we don't exist as self-enclosed units of matter. Who we are cannot be remembered or forgotten. Our identity, as we perceive it, only appears in consciousness. Underneath, it exists in a thoughtless, wordless awareness, in which there is no "We" or "I", just an "Amness"...simply an indescribable sense of being. — Anita B. Sulser PhD

When you feel perpetually unmotivated, you start questioning your existence in an unhealthy way; everything becomes a pseudo intellectual question you have no interest in responding whatsoever. This whole process becomes your very skin and it does not merely affect you; it actually defines you. So, you see yourself as a shadowy figure unworthy of developing interest, unworthy of wondering about the world - profoundly unworthy in every sense and deeply absent in your very presence. — Ingmar Bergman

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence? — Milan Kundera

The earth is not our home. We came from nothing, and to that condition our nostalgia
should turn. Why would anyone care about this dim bulb in the blackness of space? The earth produced us, or at least subsidized our evolution. Is it really entitled to receive a pardon, let alone the sacrifice of human lives, for this original sin - a capital crime in reverse (very much in the same way that reproduction makes one an accessory before the fact to an individual's death)? Someone once said that nature abhors a vacuum. This is precisely why nature should be abhorred. Instead, the nonhuman environment is simultaneously extolled and ravaged by a company of poor players who can no longer act naturally. It is one thing for the flora and fauna to feed and fight and breed in an unthinking continuance of their existence. It is quite another for us to do so in defiance of our own minds, which over and again pose the same question: "What are we still doing in this horrible place? — Thomas Ligotti

Some say Christianity is just a crutch. But let's turn the question on its edge for a moment. Is atheism an emotional crutch, wishful thinking? The ax cuts both ways. Perhaps atheists are rejecting God because they've had a bad relationship with their father. Instead of inventing God, have atheists invented non-God? Have they invented atheism to escape some of the frightening implications of God's existence? Think about it. — Greg Koukl

I also know that we will never ever know the ultimate reason for our existence. We might know the how, where and when of being here, but the why will always be a question that remains unanswered. That main objective is known to Him alone, and to no one else. — Paulo Coelho

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are serviley crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson — Richard Dawkins

In place of moral absolutes, they promote moral relativism and sometimes even question the very existence of truth and reality. To them truth and reality are what we subjectively perceive them to be. — Ben Shapiro

No nation has been on earth since the beginning of time and the very concept of nationhood is pretty recent. Despite that, most nations look upon their own existence as a self-evident destiny conferred by God, or by Nature, since time immemorial. Nations tend to think of their cultures and political systems, even their frontiers, as the work of Man, but they see their national existence as a transcendent fact, beyond all question — Milan Kundera

"I seek the meaning of existence," said the stranger. "You are of course assuming," said the Master, "that existence has a meaning." "Doesn't it?" "When you experience existence as it is - not as you think it is you will discover that your question has no meaning," said the Master. — Anthony De Mello

It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question, and never suppose, that a wise magistrate can justly be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy, such as those of Epicurus, which, denying a divine existence, and consequently a providence and a future state, seem to loosen, in a great measure, the ties of morality, and may be supposed, for that reason, pernicious to the peace of civil society. — David Hume

When part of what you're trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh. — Todd Solondz

See, when we begin to question the very existence of the Creator that means the creation is perfect. If every day it could not function without morning and evening prayers, then this would not be a perfect creation. This creation is so perfect that you can forget the Creator - you can just discard him, dump him - and still it goes on. So a true compliment to the Creator is when you forget about him. That is a real compliment to the wonderful piece of creation he has made; it is so perfect within itself that it does not need to draw from anything outside. — Jaggi Vasudev

After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol. — Adam Michnik

In modern science the methods of analysis are principally applied to investigating the nature of material entities. Thus, the ultimate nature of matter is sought through a reductive process and the macroscopic world is reduced to the microscopic world of particles. Yet, when the nature of these particles is further examined, we find that ultimately their very existence as objects is called into question. — Padmasambhava

But authorship is not to be denied. Not even if you are Thomas Pynchon and stonewall all attempts to establish your actual existence. My own feeling is that Pynchon does not exist, and neither do the last five hundred pages of Gravity's Rainbow, but there is no question whatsoever that Thomas Pynchon is an author. — Roy Blount Jr.

The day will come when all nations amidst which the Jews are dwelling will have to raise the question of their wholesale expulsion, a question which will be one of life or death, good health or chronic disease, peaceful existence or perpetual social fever. — Franz Liszt

If by 'God' you have something definite in mind - a being that is loving, or jealous, or whatever - then you're faced with the question of why God's that way and not another way. And if you don't have anything very definite in mind when you talk about 'God' being behind the existence of the universe, then why even use the word? So I think religion doesn't help. It's part of the human tragedy: we're faced with a mystery we can't understand - Steven Weinberg — Jim Holt

See, far above arrogance and selfishness on the rankings of undesirable Lifestyle traits, topping the lengthy list of carnal sins, occupying its very own stratosphere of unforgivable
reprehensibility, is lying. Without question, fibbing is the fastest way to secure a one-way trip to blackball status in the swing community. So assured is a liar's exile from the Lifestyle that should a perjurer come clean about a material untruth and still secure playtime, that individual will have rewritten the entire swing rulebook. And no matter how enticing it may be to rewrite history, I do not recommend attempting it. Not unless you're lusting after a celibate existence. — Daniel Stern

Refugees such as ourselves could never dare question the Disneyland ideology followed by most Americans, that theirs was the happiest place on earth. But Dr. Hedd was beyond reproach, for he was an English immigrant. His very existence as such validated the legitimacy of the former colonies, while his heritage and accent triggered the latent Anglophilia and inferiority complex found in many Americans. Dr. Hedd was clearly aware of his privilege and was amused at the discomfort he was causing his American hosts. It — Viet Thanh Nguyen

And there is no question that we are preoccupied by dying. But why? It is because when we die, we leave behind not only the world but also death. That is the paradox of the last hour. Death works with us in the world; it is a power that humanizes nature, that raises existence to being, and it is within each one of us as our most human quality; it is death only in the world - man only knows death because he is man, and he is only man because he is death in the process of becoming. But to die is to shatter the world; it is the loss of person, the annihilation of the being; and so it is also the loss of death, the loss of what in it and for me made it death. As long as I live, I am a mortal man, but when I die, by ceasing to be man I also cease to be mortal, I am no longer capable of dying, and my impending death horrifies me because I see it as it is: no longer death, but the impossibility of dying. — Maurice Blanchot

Your mind is designed in such a way that you cannot have an idea on the one hand without also having the ability to bring that idea into reality on the other. The very existence of an idea in your conscious mind means that you have within you and around you the capacity to turn it into reality. The only question you have to answer is, How badly do you want it? — Brian Tracy

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter. — Wilhelm Dilthey

Being discontented, we either seek a different job or merely succumb to environment ... instead of causing us to question life, the whole process of existence. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.
So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? — Michel Foucault

Since the last question, also the first one, the quesiton of death, offers us the interesting alternatives of disintegrating ourselves by our own wills in proof of our "freedom," or the acknowledging that we owe a human life to this waking spell of existence, regardless of the void. — Saul Bellow

How had they met? By chance, like everybody else. What were there names? What's it to you? Where were they coming from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Does anyone really know where they're going? — Denis Diderot

Archaeologists have not yet discovered any stage of human existence without art. Even in the half-light before the dawn of humanity we received this gift from Hands we did not manage to discern. Nor have we managed to ask: Why was this gift given to us and what are we to do with it? And all those prophets who are predicting that art is disintegrating, that it has used up all its forms, that it is dying, are mistaken. We are the ones who shall die. And art will remain. The question is whether before we perish we shall understand all its aspects and all its ends. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Question 1: What is the chief end of man? This most basic question confronts each of us. Why am I here? What is the reason for my existence? What is the purpose of my life? The catechism on the basis of 1 Corinthians 10:31 and Psalm 73:25 provides the familiar answer. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever. — Alistair Begg

We all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose and wrestle with our answers. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Existence has no personality. No question of personalities, it simply is whatsoever it is. To experience existence as it is, is to know the truth. — Rajneesh

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence. — Viktor E. Frankl

Finding witches not only explained evil, it also was tangible evidence of God's existence. As the sixteenth-century Cambridge theologian Roger Hutchinson argued, in a polished bit of circular reasoning, "If there be a God, as we most steadfastly must believe, verily there is a Devil also; and if there be a Devil, there is no surer argument, no stronger proof, no plainer evidence, that there is a God."13 And, conversely, as noted in a seventeenth-century witch trial, "Atheists abound in these days and witchcraft is called into question. If neither possession nor witchcraft [exists], why should we think that there are devils? If no devils, no God. — Michael Shermer

Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread. — Lisa Unger

Life is a question asked by God about the way he exists. — Kedar Joshi

Question boldly even the existence of God. — Thomas Jefferson

The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy. — William James

God is the ultimate philosophical questioner, the one who asks the logically paradoxical ultimate philosophical question about the nature of his own existence. — Kedar Joshi

The question about the end bursts out of the torment of history and the intolerableness of historical existence. — Jurgen Moltmann

I don't know when Owen began moving his hand away from the back of my head, but it's slowly moving down my back, making my arms and legs feel so weak, I question their existence. — Colleen Hoover

I'm saddened by the loss of Black Diamonds that we bury by the thousands every year never knowing the brilliance they possess. I call you my brother
and we embrace with such sincerity while our mother's tears saturate the grounds where our diamonds lay at rest. My question to you, is this innate or hate? We are greater than the current narrative. We must allow the diamonds to shine. May they shine from above. — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

I believe that the question of the existence of God is an impenetrable mystery and beyond human comprehension. — Vincent Bugliosi

At the fruit of existence, there is a single concept of anonymity. This unknown concept is well known however. All one has to do is simply look behind the mirror for the answer. Yet, the answer won't come until the right question is asked. Because the illusions of reality are dressed in endless reflections, the blind will continue to be guided by the blind. The unknown concept is recognized to those who have tasted the fruit of existence, and as distant as the woman trying to grab Heaven from the reflection of an empty pond. — Lionel Suggs

Let us not question whether God is there; let us praise Him that He is there. — Dillon Burroughs

There are two parts to the problem of measuring the objective exchange-value of money. First we have to obtain numerical demonstration of the fact of variations in the objective exchange-value of money; then the question must be decided whether it is possible to make a quantitative examination of the causes of particular price movements, with special reference to the question whether it would be possible to produce.
So far as the first-named problem is concerned, it is self-evident that its solution must assume the existence of a good, or complex of goods, of unchanging objective exchange-value. The fact that such goods are inconceivable needs no further elucidation.
If the one is proved to be soluble, then so also is the other; and proof of the insolubility of the one is also proof of the insolubility of the other. — Ludwig Von Mises

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. — Thomas Jefferson

He laughs like, what can you do? Laughs and spreads his palms as if revealing himself, Cortez the thief, as he is and always was, the person I always knew was there but never wanted to see. I am surprised, but why am I surprised? I decided at some point that he had made my road his road, given over to me the last two months of preimpact existence, because I was on my cockamamie hero's quest and required an able and agile sidekick - I reached that conclusion without thinking about it much and put the question aside. But everybody does everything for a reason. That's lesson number one of police work; it's lesson number one of life. — Ben H. Winters

There were many empresses and queens in power throughout the world. It is said that these legendary women ruled judicially, and that they brought about a most remarkable amity among kingdoms and the nations that surrounded them. And as for subjects, well, you've never heard a single instance of revolt, have you? Indeed not, for these women were supreme leaders, and one of the greatest mysteries in history is that they lost their power. I suppose it had something to do with a male heir, somewhere or other, who bored by such a peaceful existence,thought it might be more interesting if the question of authority were decided by brute force. — Nancy Madore

A certain kind of exhaustion sets in from having to constantly explain and justify one's existence or participation in an artistic or creative realm. What a privilege it must be to never have to answer the question "How does it feel to be a woman playing music?" or "Why did you choose to be in an all-female band?" The people who get there early have to work the hardest. — Carrie Brownstein