#existence

The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents. ↗

— Ernst Haeckel

#cause #earthly #existence #favor #love

It is a lonely existence to be a child with a disability which no-one can see or understand, you exasperate your teachers, you disappoint your parents, and worst of all you know that you are not just stupid. ↗

— Susan Hampshire

#disability #disappoint #existence #just #know

Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence. Now, the people of this land know about dragons because their leaders have warned them about them. They tell stories about cruel dragons with razor teeth and fiery breath. They recount legends of dragons hunting by night on silent wings. In short, the leaders make sure that the people believe in all the qualities of dragons, including that key quality of existence. And then they control the people — when they need to — with their fear of dragons. The people pay a dragon-slaying tax … everyone stays indoors after dark to avoid being snatched by swooping claws … and nobody ever strays out of bounds for fear of being eaten well and truly up. Perhaps somebody will wonder if dragons aren’t, after all, fictitious because — despite their size — nobody seems to have actually seen one. And so it is necessary from time to time to provide evidence: a burnt tree or two, a splintered rock, the mysterious absence of a villager. The population is controlled by the dragons in its collective mind. It’s contrived superstition, and it is possible because the people do not know enough about the way the world works to know that dragons do not exist. ↗

— David Whiteland

#dragons #existence #faith #ignorance #superstition

Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation. ↗

— Theodor Herzl

#being #denies #existence #four #himself

If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology. ↗

— David Hilbert

#anything #ask #astrology #bring #discover

Sometimes I think that the biggest difference between men and women is that more men need to seek out some terrible lurking thing in existence and hurl themselves upon it. Women know where it lives but they can let it alone. ↗

— Russell Hoban

#between #biggest #biggest difference #difference #existence

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#existence #infinite #means #point #random

Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself. ↗

— Cordell Hull

#attendant #become #breathe #cast #circumstances

The existence is a tremendous curiosity, with in the course of the years, the discovery of yourself in your inmost evolutions. With the age you feel better than you are, what you represent. Which means a little at the planet's scale. ↗

— Jacky Ickx

#better #course #curiosity #discovery #evolutions

I firmly believe that the mission of religion in the 21st century must be to contribute concretely to the peaceful coexistence of humankind. ↗

— Daisaku Ikeda

#believe #century #coexistence #contribute #firmly