Father Ted TV - George W Bush - David Attenborough – Cicero - Richard Dawkins - Bertrand Russell - Jean-Paul Sartre - Oscar Wilde - Mary Wollstonecraft - Vladimir Nabokov - Samuel Beckett & Waiting For Godot - Terry Pratchett - Arthur Conan Doyle - Stéphane Mallarmé - Woody Allen - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 1999 - Star Trek TV - Star Trek: The Next Generation TV - Star Trek: Voyager TV - Friedrich Nietzsche - Christopher Hitchens - Thich Nhat Hanh - Albert Camus - Anton Chekhov - Quentin Crisp - Erich Fromm - D H Lawrence - H L Mencken - Henri Bergson - William of Occam - Salman Rushdie - Arthur Schopenhauer - Edgar Allan Poe - Jonathan Sacks - Franz Kafka - George Orwell - John Stuart Mill - The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman 2013 - Stephen Chbosky - Charles Dickens - Agatha Christie - Blaise Pascal - Rene Descartes - Peter de Vries - Palestine Wall message -
So God, does He really exist? I mean, who knows? I don’t know. I mean personally I don’t even believe in organised religion. Father Ted s1e1: Good Luck, Father Ted, Dougal’s television interview, Channel 4 1995
I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully. George W Bush
I can’t believe that each species was brought into existence by a merciful God who cares about human beings. David Attenborough, televised interview
Do the gods exist or do they not? Cicero
Why would He choose the one way which makes it look as though He doesn’t exist, which makes his own role completely superfluous? Richard Dawkins v Alister McGrath, Oxford Literary Festival 2007
The first thing I might say is, Which God are you? ... The next question I would ask would be, Why did you conceal yourself so adequately? Did you deliberately go out of your way to make it look you didn’t exist? Professor Richard Dawkins, interview Have Your Say
My eyes are constantly wide open to the extraordinary fact of existence. Not just human existence, but the existence of life and how this breathtakingly powerful process, which is natural selection, has managed to take the very simple facts of physics and chemistry and build them up to redwood trees and humans. Richard Dawkins
The immediate implication of Darwin’s views is that we understand why we exist. Richard Dawkins, interview Professor Robert Winston, The Story of God, BBC 2005
After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked – as I am surprisingly often – why I bother to get up in the mornings. Richard Dawkins
We may all have come into existence five minutes ago, provided with ready-made memories, with holes in our socks and hair that needed cutting. Bertrand Russell
Existence precedes and rules essence. Jean-Paul Sartre
Man is nothing else but what he purposes. He exists only in so far that he realises himself. He is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions. Jean-Paul Sartre
There’s nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing. Jean-Paul Sartre, La nauesée, 1939, cited Human, All Too Human 3/3: The Road to Freedom, BBC 1999
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. Oscar Wilde
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
It is through Art, and through Art only, that we can realise our perfection; through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence. Oscar Wilde, Intentions, 1891
Always appear what you are. And you will not pass through existence without enjoying its genuine blessings. Love and respect. Let not the springtide of existence pass away unenjoyed. Gain experience. Mary Wollstonecraft
The cradle rocks about an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two extremities of darkness. Vladimir Nabokov
Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece. Vladimir Nabokov
We always find something, eh Didi, to give us the impression we exist. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot starring Stephen Brennan & Barry McGovern & Johnny Murphy & Sam McGovern et al, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Estragon, 2001
Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. Terry Pratchett, Mort
‘My mind,’ he said, ‘rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation. That is why I have chosen my own particular profession, or rather created it, for I am the only one in the world.’ Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book. Stéphane Mallarmé
The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. Woody Allen
Woody Allen: That’s quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn’t it?
Woman: Yes it is.
Woody Allen: What does it say to you?
Woman: It re-states the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos. Play It Again, Sam 1972 starring Woody Allen & Diane Keaton & Jerry Lacy & Tony Roberts & Susan Anspach et al, director Herbert Ross
Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase, Form is emptiness. That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, Emptiness is form. One should not think that these are two separate things. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 1999 starring Forest Whitaker & John Tormey & Henry Silva & Cliff Gorman & Isaach De Bankole & Camille Winbush & Tricia Vessey & Richard Portnow et al, director Jim Jarmusch
Change is the essential process of all existence. Star Trek s3e15: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, Spock
2Charting the unknown possibilities of existence. Star Trek: The Next Generation s7e26: All Good Things II, Q
I have only one demand: to exist. Star Trek: Voyager s2e23: The Thaw
We are the Borg. Existence as you know it is over. Star Trek: Voyager s3e26: Scorpion I
The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist. Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen
We must begin seeing other creatures as equal. Existence makes us all equal. Alice Walker
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence, and loathing seizes him. Friedrich Nietzsche
That the human species has an original sin – in other words existing ... That it will be punished for this. Christopher Hitchens v Peter Hitchens, debate 2008
You are what you want to become. Why search any more? You are a wonderful manifestation. The whole universe has come together to make your existence possible. There is nothing that is not you. The kingdom of God, the Pure Land, Nirvana, Happiness, and Liberation are all You. Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear