Existence Quotes
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Ten years ago, in the aftermath of the referendum in Quebec, the very existence of Canada was on the line... I had a responsibility to ensure that Canada never again came close to the precipice.
Jean Chretien
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Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.
Karl Kraus
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Aren't you ashamed, you who walk backward along the whole path of existence, and blame me for walking backward along the path of the promenade?
Diogenes
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Because we are not separate and we are a strand in the web of this existence, there is nothing about us - which includes who we are and what we do - that is not happening perfectly.
Bryan Kest
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If we affirm one moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event - and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Go without a coat when it's cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it's all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you're made of and what you're capable of. If you're never tested, you'll never define you character.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
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It is part of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towards those who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using that power.
John Stuart Mill
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If the war is lost, the nation will also perish. This fate is inevitable. There is no necessity to take into consideration the basis which the people will need to continue a most primitive existence. On the contrary, it will be better to destroy things ourselves because this nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation [Russia]. Besides, those who remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been killed.
Adolf Hitler
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In a crystal we have clear evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being.
Nikola Tesla
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If people insist that honor is dearer than life itself, what they really mean is that existence and well-being are as nothing compared with other people's opinions. Of course, this may be only an exaggerated way of stating the prosaic truth that reputation, that is, the opinion others have of us, is indispensable if we are to make any progress in the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
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[in the true mad north] of introspection, where 'falcons of the inner eye' dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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The world is so unpredictable. Things happen suddenly, unexpectedly. We want to feel we are in control of our own existence. In some ways we are, in some ways we're not. We are ruled by the forces of chance and coincidence.
Paul Auster
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The Oldfields of the future are beyond hearing; they are shut up in the factories and the workshops, leading a rackety and mechanical existence, to the damage of their bodies and the peril of their souls, for the sake of an extra pound or so a week, which they promptly spend on mental or physical narcotics.
Beverley Nichols
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in a sense much great literature is subversive, since its very existence implies that what matters is art, imagination, and truth. In what we call the real world, on the other hand, what usually counts is money, power, and public success.
Alison Lurie
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I had made myself the center of my own existence and had my back turned to God.
Bede Griffiths
