Reason To Exist Quotes & Sayings

Since philosophy is the exploration of the rational, it is for that very reason the apprehension of the present and the actual, not the erection of a beyond, supposed to exist, God knows where, or rather which exists, and we can perfectly well say where, namely in the error of a one-sided, empty, ratiocination. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

In our modern world, this elemental quality of storytelling is denied. We live today in a world in which everything has its place and function and nothing is left out of place. Storytelling is thus at a discount and like everything else in a world ruled by the laws of exchange value, literature is required to submit itself to the requirements of the market and must learn, like any other commodity, to adapt and serve needs that lie outside of itself and its concrete value. It is forced to stand not for itself but for an ideological cause of one sort or another, whether it be political, social or literary. It cannot exist for itself: like everything else it has to be justified. And for this very reason the power of storytelling is automatically devalued. Literature is reduced to the status of complimentary utilitarian functions: as a pastime to provide distraction and entertainment, or as a heightened activity that would claim to explore 'great truths' about the human condition. — Michael Richardson

Do not presume to judge the Qui, Mr. President. Your society aspires to an ideal that exists only at levels like the United Regions. Analyze your world's history and you find pockets of feudal life that continue to exist today. Cultures where rape victims are killed so as not to dishonor their family; countries where the male of your species has so little self-control, the female is obliged to hide behind cloth for fear they will tempt them into carnal acts; regions where children are slaughtered for no reason. And this was all before our invasion. — Kayla Stonor

I build worlds around us and solar systems and creatures that only exist in dreams. I manifest colors that have flavors and darkness that's all encompassing. I go to a place unborn by man, created in a space where the natural law has no reach and the science of reason is washed away , replaced by the basic pure desire to exist, all of it coming from a place I never knew I had. — E.J. Mellow

How not to search that space where, for a time span lasting from dusk to dawn, two beings have no other reason to exist than to expose themselves totally to each other- totally, integrally, absolutely- so that their common solitude may appear not in front of their own eyes but in front of ours, yes, how not to look there and how not to rediscover "the negative community, the community of those who have no community"? — Maurice Blanchot

One man in a thousand can see the moons of Jupiter. Because the other nine hundred and ninety-nine can't see them there's no reason to doubt that the moons of Jupiter exist, and certainly no reason for calling the thousandth man a lunatic. — Agatha Christie

If all the world were Christian, it might not matter if all the world were educated. But a cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. — C.S. Lewis

Sella smiled sadly as she laid the scarf on her knees, her fingers tracing over the delicate gold-thread pattern (...) The moon, the sing of calm reflection, from where reason and balance are derived (...) The sun, source of passion, love, anger (...) We exist here, between the two. Grown from the earth, warmed by the sun, cooled by the moonlight night. Your brother's heart had been pulled too far into the sun, fired with anger and regret. Now he has cooled and he looks to the moon for guidance. — Anthony Ryan

Do you know that the United States is the only country in history that has ever used its own monogram as a symbol of depravity? Ask yourself why. Ask yourself how long a country that did that could hope to exist, and whose moral standards have destroyed it. It was the only country in history where wealth was not acquired by looting, but by production, not by force, but by trade, the only country whose money was the symbol of man's right to his own mind, to his work, to his life, to his happiness, to himself. If this is evil, by the present standards of the world, if this is the reason for damning us, then we - we, the dollar chasers and makers - accept it and choose to be damned by that world. We choose to wear the sign of the dollar on our foreheads, proudly, as our badge of nobility - the badge we are willing to live for and, if need be, to die. — Ayn Rand

rationalist believes in reason as the primary source of knowledge, and he may also believe that man has certain innate ideas that exist in the mind prior to all experience. And the clearer such ideas may be, the more certain it is that they correspond to reality. You — Jostein Gaarder

The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the 'Super', i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon. — Enrico Fermi

I stand before you and my heart is in your hands,
And I don't know how,
I'd survive without your kiss,
'cause you've given me a reason to exist — Kelly Clarkson

A kid thinking about fairy tales and believing in fairy tales
Acts like a sick god, but like a god.
Because even though he affirms that what doesn't exist exists,
He knows things exist, that he exists,
He knows existing exists and doesn't explain itself,
And he knows there's no reason at all for anything to exist.
He knows being is the point.
All he doesn't know is that thought isn't the point.

(10/1/1917) — Alberto Caeiro

At first Silas liked the subjects simply because of their strangeness, but slowly he began to believe in the possibilities of what he was reading, in a world filled with secrets and magic. When he was younger, he'd suspected his father believed in many of these things too, so that made it easy for them to talk. As he grew older, Silas began to see the glimmers of hieroglyphic logic behind the occult. There was a reason for these oddities to exist, perhaps as strange connections between the mind and the things people feared or desired. Magic was a conversation. Ghosts were real, and they were watching because something had happened that necessitated their presence. — Ari Berk

But a fact is like a sack which won't stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist. — Luigi Pirandello

...A huge "army" of immature guys with blinders over their eyes, looking for UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, are going nowhere. Such men are all ending up to be eternal dating losers, because they are simply wasting huge amounts of effort, trying hard and hoping to find something that does not exist on the planet.
To achieve the goal of personal happiness, we have to be honest with ourselves first of all. We need to be brave enough and smart enough to look into the mirror at our true selves, without our comfortable masks of lies or hypocrisy.

LET'S FACE IT:
There are always reasons why we feel love for another person; we don't love someone for no reason at all. We love them for the qualities they possess, which we admire; for those amazing, bright emotions they evoke from within ourselves; for the love and care that we so acceptingly receive from them; and for what good feelings we experience being around them, etc.

Be HONEST with yourself! — Sahara Sanders

If you don't want something to exist - and there are many reasons to want to keep things private - keep it off the web. But if you put it in digital form, expect it to be bootlegged, remixed, manipulated, and endlessly commented upon. — Kenneth Goldsmith

Religion, ideology, resources, land, spite, love or just because ... No matter how pathetic the reason, it's enough to start war. War will never cease to exist ... reasons can be thought up after the fact ... Human nature pursues strife. — Masashi Kishimoto

This is one reason that some experts believe there may have been many other big bangs, perhaps trillions and trillions of them, spread through the mighty span of eternity, and that the reason we exist in this particular one is that this is one we could exist in. As Edward P. Tryon of Columbia University once put it: "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." To which adds Guth: "Although the creation of a universe might be very unlikely, Tryon emphasized that no one had counted the failed attempts. — Bill Bryson

I don't make movies for the same reason that a lot of people do. I make films because I need to see them exist in a very specific way. — Harmony Korine

On a world built to ordered specification, there was no logical reason for such a mountain to exist. Yet every world should have at least one unclimbable mountain. — Larry Niven

For an important intellectual product to be immediately weighty, a deep relationship or concordance has to exist between the life of its creator and the general lives of the people. These people are generally unaware why exactly they praise a certain work of art. Far from being truly knowledgeable, they perceive it to have a hundred different benefits to justify their adulation; but the real underlying reason for their behavior cannot be measured, is sympathy. — Thomas Mann

We wait too long to tell the people we love that they are the very reason that we exist. We assume that our wife, child, other family members, and friends understand our love and affection. We assume that people we care about understand our enigmatic idiosyncrasies and willingly accept the shrouded reasons behind our demonstrable oddities. We assume that other people sense that we struggle valiantly in our blackened landscape. We presume that other people comprehend our struggle to glean meaning amongst the ashes spewed from the absurd circumstances that we operate. Sometimes we need to stop and tell the tenderhearted persons whom we care about that we love them and explain that our awkward strangeness is not a rejection of them. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I think there is some resistance when people talk about ethical fashion, and a tendency to panic that if you're bringing a moral agenda and highlighting the origins of the garments, you can't incorporate style. But there's no reason why style and conscience can't co-exist. — Erin O'Connor

Natural death is independent of all reason and is really an irrational death, in which the pitiable substance of the shell determines how long the kernel is to exist or not; in which, accordingly, the stunted, diseased and dull witted jailer is lord, and indicates the moment at which his distinguished prisoner shall die. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool. — Derek R. Audette

Most people have heard of the Eastern teaching that it is important to exist in the moment. It can be hard to train yourself to observe what is right now (and not to bog down in thoughts of what was and what will be), but the philosophical teaching that underlies that idea - the reason that staying in the moment is so vital - is equally important: Everything is changing. All the time. And you can't stop it. And your attempts to stop it actually put you in a bad place. — Ed Catmull

Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release ...
So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love
loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Our desires correspond precisely to God's plans. It's not that we want something, so we engage in wishful thinking that what we want exists. It's the opposite - the reason we want it is precisely because God has planned for it to exist. As we'll see, resurrected people living in a resurrected universe isn't our idea - it's God's. — Randy Alcorn

If everything in chemistry is explained in a satisfactory manner without the help of phlogiston, it is by that reason alone infinitely probable that the principle does not exist; that it is a hypothetical body, a gratuitous supposition; indeed, it is in the principles of good logic, not to multiply bodies without necessity. — Antoine Lavoisier

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them. — Bertrand Russell

I am tempted to find reason and justice in the fact that he died as violently and indecently as he lived. But that is too ingenuous a way out. It does not explain Dimitrios; it only apologizes for him. Special sorts of conditions must exist for the creation of the special sort of criminal that he typified ... all I do know is that while might is right, while chaos and anarchy masquerade as order and enlightenment, those conditions will obtain. — Eric Ambler

It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods. — Stephen Jay Gould

A tank and its crew has but one reason to exist. To maneuver the tank's cannon to a position where it could do the most damage and feed it once it was there. — Harold Coyle

Story may not be a great addition to some games - games where action is the whole reason for the game to exist. — Jane Jensen

It's true: Everyone needs a reason to stay alive
someone who justifies your existence. Someone who loves you. Not beyond all reason. Just loves you. Even just shows an interest. Even someone who doesn't exist, or isn't yours. No, no! They don't even have to love you! They just have to be there to love! Target for your arrows. Magnetic Pole to drag on your compass needle and stop it spinning and tell you where you're heading and ... Someone to soak up all the yearning. That's what I think. — Geraldine McCaughrean

Something I say a lot when it comes to anti-feminist stereotypes is that they exist for a reason. — Jessica Valenti

I'll argue to the death against stupid legislation, but some rules exist for a reason. — Alastair Reynolds

Let us think of the human race as if it were a single human being," Ibn Rushd proposed. "A child understands nothing, and clings to faith because it lacks knowledge. The battle between reason and superstition may be seen as mankind's long adolescence, and the triumph of reason will be its coming of age. It is not that God does not exist but that like any proud parent he awaits the day when his child can stand on its own two feet, make its own way in the world, and be free of its dependence upon him. — Salman Rushdie

A fact is like a sack which won't stand up if it's empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which caused it to exist. — Luigi Pirandello

A church that looks and talks and sounds just like the world has no reason to exist. — Rod Dreher

In any story universe, you don't just want to keep adding to it when there are places and planets that exist that will already achieve the same thing for you story-wise. You don't want to just keep making it bigger for no good reason. — Troy Denning

I understood that the reason we have to accept other people is simply because God receives us just the way we are. Yes, all of us to the last person ...
I had never thought it should be that way. Had I been doing it, I would have arranged gradations of acceptability according to how bad or how good we were
or how hard we have tried. But ... the Power who broods over our aching world has quite a different idea: He persists in receiving us and loving us all even when we reject Him and refuse to have anything to do with Him, even when we strut our little intellects and insist that He does not exist. — Catherine Marshall

But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative ... Nothing could be without its opposite bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now known to be one. — Patricia Highsmith

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like an avowed atheist who sees the Devil at night, you reason: He certainly doesn't exist; this is therefore an illusion, perhaps a result of indigestion. But the Devil is sure that he exists, and believes in his upside-down theology. What, then, will frighten him? You make the sign of the cross, and he vanishes in a puff of brimstone. — Umberto Eco

There are no grounds for going beyond a scientific explanation of reality and no sound reason for believing anything but our sense experience. A clear intellect, close attention to detail and a little scientific knowledge will expose religion as superstitious bosh. God does not exist.
Why tolerate darkness? Everything is here and clear, if only we look carefully. — Yann Martel

I don't want to be thought of as somebody who's spiritually ambiguous, but the reality is there's unknown things happening. I'm not ready to point at what they are or what the reason is, but I know they exist. — Shane Carruth

If other people thought art was important, then it would be required to graduate. But no, I don't have to take art. I do have to take math, which is just a waste of time because the numbers get all switched up in my brain, plus, calculators exist for a reason. I do have to take history, which is basically memorizing tariff acts till your brain bleeds. I do have to take four years of gym class with a bunch of jerks who punch me if they don't like what I say. But art? Optional. Even though art and music and literature and all that are what make us human. Algebra doesn't make us human. Games don't make us human. — Laura Ruby

Prejudice will always exist. So will sickness and disease, but that scarcely seems sufficient reason for telling our medical scientists to put on their hats, close up their laboratories, and give the spirochetes, bacilli and viruses a free hand. — Margaret Halsey

I am, for some reason, actually happy with who I am and the muscle, the bones, and the flub that exist beneath these clothes.
I don't need to lose 20 lbs. to be attractive.
I don't need to starve myself of the good things of life to be healthy.
And, I don't need to chase someone else's ideal of what I should be looking like. — Dan Pearce

Ladies, you may not realize this, understand this, or even believe this, but everything else we do is ultimately for you. Men don't do anything-create art, build businesses, donate to charity, invent things, or do anything noteworthy-for any reason other than to impress women, and thus get them to have sex with us. If women didn't exist, we'd still just be naked grunting apes living in caves. In a very real way, pussy is the key to human civilization. You don't have to like it, but it's a fact; if you understand it, you understand men. — Tucker Max

Man and fascism cannot co-exist. If fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people. — Vasily Grossman

What can be accomplished by a few principles is not effected by many. But it seems that everything we see in the world can be accounted for by other principles, supposing God did not exist. For all natural things can be reduced to one principle, which is nature, and all voluntary things can be reduced to one principle, which is human reason, or will. Therefore there is no need to suppose God's existence. — Thomas Aquinas

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, - that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, - that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, - and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed. — Charles Darwin

Perfection," Inigo said, "is what we strive for; it is never what we should achieve. There is no such thing as utopia. Life by its nature is a struggle. Take that away and you take away any reason to exist. — Peter F. Hamilton

NATO was constructed on the - with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist? — Noam Chomsky

I think love is sort of a con you play on yourself. I think the whole conception of love is something the previous generation invents to justify having created you. You know I think the real reason children are born is because parents are so bored they have children to amuse themselves. They're so bored they don't have anything else to do so they have a child because that will keep them busy for a while. Then to justify to the kid the reason he exists they tell him there's such a thing as love and that's where you come from because me and your daddy or me and your mommy were in love and that's why you exist. When actually it was because they were bored out of their minds. — Richard Hell

That's never going to happen. I don't function without you, you're the reason I breathe, the reason my heart takes each and every beat. I love you with every fibre of my body, you're my whole world and I don't want to exist in one where I can't be with you. — C.M. King

What Satan means to me-Satan is a stabilizing force in my life. It gives me a reason to be; it gives me-an excuse to rationalize. There is a part of me that believes he really does exist. I have my doubts, but we all do, about many things. — Richard Ramirez

Honestly, half the reason I like you is because you're so ... I don't know. You like life." He looked away from my eyes, amused as his thoughts spun, considering. "You're fearless. Bold. Not afraid to enjoy yourself. You just go out there and do what you want. I like the whirlwind you exist in. I envy it. It's funny, really." He smiled. "I used to think I wanted someone exactly like me, but now I think I'd be bored to death with another version of myself. I'm surprised I don't bore you sometimes."
I gaped. "Are you kidding? You're the most interesting person I know. Aside from Hugh maybe. But then, he installs breast implants and buys souls. That's a hard combination to beat. But he's not nearly as cute. — Richelle Mead

It is right that creation should exist as he has made it and as we see it happening, because this is his will, which no one would deny. For if the movement of the universe were irrational, and the world rolled on in random fashion, one would be justified in disbelieving what we say. But if the world is founded on reason, wisdom and science, and is filled with orderly beauty, then it must owe its origin and order to none other than the Word of God. — St.Athanasius

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

I don't know if ghouls are allowed to live either. But there has to be a reason we exist. — Sui Ishida

If summer racing didn't exist, I could go on holiday, yes, because nobody else would then be riding winners; but as long it goes ahead, I'll do it for the reason that I want to ride more winners than anyone else. — Tony McCoy

Satan is behind the theory of evolution. Satan hates God and us. Satan is the father of all lies. So he wants nothing more than to make every human being alive believe lies about God, ourselves and how and why we exist. — Lisa Bedrick

Touring is always important to me. It's like a big IOU to my fans, because I know they are the reason I exist. — Katy Perry

One of these people was a girl who exemplified everything I could ever come up with to want. We grew very close very quickly and revealed dreams and compared fears and mocked gently and occasionally told lies, but nothing bad. The sex, I'm sorry, Dad, but the sex was unlike anything I believed might someplace exist. I remember lying with her in bed and touching her thigh and thinking, My God. This is the reason I grew hands in the first place. — Kyle Beachy

Doesn't there, in fact, exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his own very best interests, or - not to violate logic - some best good ... which is more important and higher than any other good, and for the sake of which man is prepared if necessary to go against all the laws, against, that is, reason, honour, peace and quiet, prosperity - in short against all those fine and advantageous things - only to attain that primary, best good which is dearer to him than all else? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time. — Isaac Asimov

If it is the case that we are merely slaves to the natural processes computing our advanced fight and flight responses, then we are never truly thinking, which means that logic and reason - the things we hold so dear - do not exist either. — Lewis N. Roe

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze. Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating torment, its black thoughts, its sombre and brooding ferocity? Well, I do. It takes a man all is inborn strength to fight hunger properly. It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonour, and the perdition of one's soul - than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these chaps, too, had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst the corpses of a battlefield. — Joseph Conrad

Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game-interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself. — L. Ron Hubbard

Our political parties exist for no other reason than to win power; they are not ideological debating societies designed to present a particular political philosophy and to persuade voters to accept it. — Tom Wicker

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void. — Terence McKenna

How easy it is for me to live with you, Lord!
How easy it is for me to believe in You!

When my mind is distraught
and my reason fails,
when the cleverest people do not see further
than this evening and do not know
what must be done tomorrow -
You grant me the clear confidence,
that You exist, and that You will take care
that not all the ways of goodness are stopped.

At the height of earthly fame I gaze
with wonder at that path
through hopelessness -
to this point, from which even I have been able to convey
to men some reflection of the light which comes from You.

And you will enable me to go on doing
as much as needs to be done.
And in so far as I do not manage it -
that means that You have allotted the task to others. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.
A water-baby? You never heard of a water-baby. Perhaps not. That is the very reason why this story was written.
( ... )
"But there are no such things as water-babies."
How do you know that? Have you been there to see? And if you had been there to see, and had seen none, that would not prove that there were none. If Mr. Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood - as folks sometimes fear he never will - that does not prove that there are no such things as foxes. And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world. And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do. — Charles Kingsley

Though it may be the peculiar happiness of Socrates and other geniuses of his stamp, to reason themselves into virtue, the human species would long ago have ceased to exist, had it depended entirely for its preservation on the reasonings of the individuals that compose it. Par 1, 36 — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Whatever happened to chivalry? Does it only exist in 80's movies? I want John Cusack holding a boombox outside my window. I wanna ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey. I want Jake from Sixteen Candles waiting outside the church for me. I want Judd Nelson thrusting his fist into the air because he knows he got me. Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life. — Bert V. Royal

An animal has no intellectual capacity to justify or to find reasons to exist. An animal just exists because it's the natural thing to do. — Steven Spielberg

I wish to make it clear that 'history' in the sense in which most people speak of it simply does not exist; and this is at least one reason why I say that it has no meaning. — Karl R. Popper

They journeyed a long time and found nothing. At length they discerned a small light, which was the Earth ... But they could not find the smallest reason to suspect that we and our fellow citizens of this globe have the honor to exist. — Anonymous

I'm sure that inside your heart you're trying with all your might to find it on your own ... the reason you were born. Because really, there might not be anyone who was born with a reason. I think ... that everyone ... everyone might have to find one on their own. A reason for being born, a reason that it's okay to be alive, a reason to exist. I think everyone might have to find it themselves ... and decide it for themselves ... The reason you're looking for might be vague, unclear and uncertain. And you might lose it. But as long as you're alive, you have to keep searching for that reason. — Natsuki Takaya

The reason sex is fun is not to cater to the desire for individual human pleasure, but because hunanity would have ceased to exist a long time ago if it were drudgery. — Joe Beaton

A living being does not fire blindly without knowing at what he is shooting and for what reason. Life had to have died within those who did so. This was not changed by the fact that the machines moved spontaneously, mechanically. If these mechanical men did not exist there would be no war. But how did they work? What controlled their actions? Who created them and why? How could living beings degenerate thus? — Wilhelm Reich

America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things. — G.K. Chesterton

A man reduced to despair by a series of misfortunes feels wearied of life, but is still so far in possession of his reason that he can ask himself whether it would not be contrary to his duty to himself to take his own life. Now he inquires whether the maxim of his action could become a universal law of nature. His maxim is: From self-love I adopt it as a principle to shorten my life when its longer duration is likely to bring more evil than satisfaction. It is asked then simply whether this principle founded on self-love can become a universal law of nature. Now we see at once that a system of nature of which it should be a law to destroy life by means of the very feeling whose special nature it is to impel to the improvement of life would contradict itself, and therefore could not exist as a system of nature; hence that maxim cannot possibly exist as a universal law of nature, and consequently would be wholly inconsistent with the supreme principle of all duty. — Immanuel Kant

Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is enough for their happiness. — Milan Kundera

The ego can exist only if you take yourself and everything seriously. Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore. Ego is illness; it needs an atmosphere of sadness to exist. Seriousness creates the sadness in you. Sadness is a necessary soil for the ego. Hence your saints are so serious, for the simple reason that they are the most egoistic people on the earth. They may be trying to be humble, but they are very proud of their humbleness. They take their humbleness very seriously. — Rajneesh

An organism exists for no other reason than that it is able to ... The wonderful, almost transcendent thing about life on earth is that in order to so exist, organisms must relate to each other and to the earth itself. — Richard Mabey

When I had my girls, I knew what magic felt like for the first time. I had created people who didn't exist before. Now I write for the same reason. Creating people and their life's stories through my writing is as close to magic as I'll ever get again. — Dori Ann Dupre

Scientists at first were skeptical that a kitten-type being could exist in the rare Martian atmosphere. As a test, two Earth kittens were put in a chamber that simulated the Martian air. The diary of this experiment is fascinating:
6:00 A.M.: Kittens appear to sleep.
7:02 A.M.: Kitten wakes, darts from one end of cage to another for no apparent reason.
7:14 A.M.: Kitten runs up wall of cage, leaps onto other kitten for no apparent reason.
7:22 A.M.: Kitten lies on back and punches other kitten for no apparent reason.
7:30 A.M.: Kitten leaps, stops, darts left, abruptly stops, climbs wall, clings for two seconds, falls on head, darts right for no apparent reason.
7:51 A.M.: Kitten parses first sentence of daily newspaper that is at bottom of chamber.
With the exception of the parsing, all behavior is typical of Earth kitten behavior. The parsing activity, which was done with a small ball-point pen, was an anomaly. — Steve Martin

To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. — Ayn Rand

I may have been born into this world to be the Gwardian, but I was created for you, for us. You are the reason I exist, the reason I breathe. You are the light to my darkness, and without you I am lost forever. — Madison Thorne Grey

The reason I got into this business was for the privilege to exist in different genres and different worlds and play out different realities. — Lake Bell

The more we seek gratitude, the more reason the angels will give us for gratitude and joy to exist in our lives. — Terry Taylor

If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God. — Stephen Hawking

Political parties were established in European public life partly as an inheritance from the Terror, and partly under the influence of British practice. The mere fact that they exist today is not in itself a sufficient reason for us to preserve them. The only legitimate reason for preserving anything is its goodness. The evils of political parties are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: do they contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable? — Simone Weil

We felt if we didn't have new material in us and we didn't have a real reason to exist, then we probably wouldn't have done an 80's revival thing. We are very conscious about the fact that's what we are as a bunch of people. — Andy Taylor

There was no reason to deny humans the benefits of human civilisation, no matter what warlords, kings, emperors and even elected politicians thought about it. A society so primitive that it used gold as a means of exchange and practised the slave trade, didn't deserve to exist. — Christopher G. Nuttall