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I've always thought that real wisdom can be found in short quotes.
(Though it seems like slogans are usually a little too brief to
have true smarts.) I collect quotes in a journal I keep on
my PalmPilot (and I date my thoughts; looking back at past years'
entries helps me see how much I've been through, and prevents time
from passing through without a trace.) I've divided my skepticism-
and mortality-related quotes into 5 sections:
Some of these quotes are really brilliant, and without their viewpoints,
I might still be a nervous wreck.
Skepticism
"As they say in my country, the only thing that separates us from the
animals are mindless superstition and pointless ritual."
--Latka Gravas in "Taxi"
"Since God is silent, man is his own master; he must live in a
disenchanted world, submit everything to criticism,
and make his own way."
--Peter Gay
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
--Bertrand Russell
"Uncertainty in the pressure of vivid hopes and fears is painful,
but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of
comforting fairy tales."
--Bertrand Russell
"Rationality tied to moral decency is the most powerful joint
instrument for good that our planet has ever known."
--Michael Shermer
"I think art should be in the place in our culture where religion
used to be. Where magic used to be, there should be art."
--Teller
"The question is complex and life is short."
--Protagoras on the existence of the gods
Meaning of Life
We are here for no purpose, unless we can invent one.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jailbird
"But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not
knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without
having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can
tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me."
--Richard Feynman
There ain't no answer.
There ain't going to be any answer.
There never has been an answer.
There's the answer.
--Gertrude Stein
Then I will tell you a great secret, Captain, perhaps the greatest
of all time. The molecules of your body are the same molecules that
make up this station, and the nebula outside-- that burn inside the
stars themselves. We are starstuff. We are the Universe made manifest,
trying to figure itself out.
-Delenn, Babylon 5
All the molecules in your body were formed inside stars. We are the
future of ancient stars.
-The 1997 Nobel Conference.
People and stars are made of the same stuff.
-Bill Nye the Science Guy
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
--from The Last Rites of the Bokononist faith
Life is a search for the truth; and there is no truth
--Chinese Proverb
"The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --
moreover, the only one."
--E. M. Cioran
People act as if death is contagious. It's not contagious, you know. Death is as natural as life. It's part of the deal we made.
[...]
It's natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it all is because we don't see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we're human we're something above nature.
We're not. Everything that gets born, dies. Do you accept that?
All right. Now here's the payoff. Here is how we are different from those wonderful plants and animals. As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on--in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.
Death ends a life, not a relationship.
--Morrie Schwartz, quoted in Mitch Albom's "Tuesdays with Morrie"
Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)
A tireless French actress, Sarah went through more
than 1,000 lovers in her colorful life, many of them
famous writers and artists. She once observed, "It is by spending
oneself that one becomes rich." Sarah often slept in a rosewood
coffin lined with letters from her lovers.
--World Sexual Records,
"Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? Those who seek the folly of unrelieved 'happiness'--who fear moods, who shun solitude, who do not know the diginity of occasional depression--can find bliss easily enough: in tranquilizing pills, or in senility. The purpose of life is not to be happy."
--Leo Rosten
"We are here to abet creation and to witness to it, to notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house."
--Annie Dilliard.
"No why. Just here."
-John Cage, Life Magazine's "Why are we here"
There are no "facts"-- there is only the fact
that man, every man everywhere in the world,
is on his way to ordination. Some men take
the long route and some take the short route.
Every man is working out his own way and nobody
can be of help except by being kind, generous,
and patient.
--Henry Miller, _Tropic of Capricorn_
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around,
and don't let anybody tell you any different."
--Kurt Vonnegut
Simple Pleasures
"Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less
boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it."
--Alice Walker
"There's always a little bit of heaven, even in a disaster area."
--Wavy Gravy
"It's like Vegas. You're up, you're down, but in the end the house always wins. Doesn't mean you didn't have fun."
--The Devil in "Deconstructing Harry", Woody Allen
"I'm a good influence on everyone I meet-- but they don't realize until
decades later. That's what I keep telling myself."
--David Johnson, 98-6-17
"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: This is the ideal life."
--Mark Twain
The next time you are contemplating a decision in which you are
debating whether or not to go for the gusto, ask yourself this
important question: "How long am I going to be dead?" With that
perspective, you can now make a free, fearless choice to do just
about any goddamned sneaky thing your devious little mind can
think up. Go ahead. Have your fun. You're welcome. Go on.
See you in hell.
--Matt Groening, "So You Want To Have A Shameful
Affair Yet Somehow Can't Justify It", Love Is Hell
"Looking back on your life,
what would you say satisfied you most?"
"...I'd say women."
--Interviewer and Man Ray
"There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
--George Santayana
So, if happiness isn't being rich, then it's probably not being
middle class, which means you're just as likely to find it at
rock bottom, which doesn't require all the effort, and hell,
I'm already there.
--Jake, "Staggering Heights"
"Life can then little else supply
But a few good fucks and then we die"
--John Wilkes
"I've had a pretty good lesson in human nature. It's more important to try to surround yourself with people who can give you a little happiness, because you only pass through this life once, Jack. You don't come back for an encore."
--Elvis Presley
Struggle of Life
"Man, as we know him, is a poor creature; but he is halfway between
an ape and a god and he is traveling in the right direction."
--Dean William R. Inge
"Death is the lot of us all, and the only way that the human race has ever conquered death is by treating it with contempt. By living every golden minute as if one had all Eternity..."
--Robert A. Heinlein
Each day is a little life;
every waking and rising a little birth;
every fresh morning a little youth;
every going to rest and sleep a little dearth.
--Arthur Schopenhauer
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
--Mr. Blue, 99-10-26
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another --
it's one damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Of course, degeneration is programmed into our DNA: Nature seems to want
us to reproduce and then fall by the wayside. But your generation wants
to hang onto its youth into its 90s, on the theory that if you stay around
long enough maybe you can get your life together.
--Mr.Blue
"After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box."
--Italian Proverb
"I am not dying, not anymore than any of us are at any moment. We run, hopefully as fast as we can, and then everyone must stop. We can only choose how we handle the race."
--Hugh Elliott
"Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret."
--TWENTY PAST MIDNIGHT, 99-5-22
"Sisyphus has a sense of playfulness [...]
you have to look at it from the rock's point of view."
--Pointy Haired Boss, Dilbert (TV)
Today is the first day of the rest of your short, brutish
existence as a sentient creature before being snuffed
out into utter nothingness for all eternity.
--Matt Groening
On the death of a baby racoon: "It's either mean or it's arbitrary,
and either way I've got the heebie-jeebies."
--Calvin
"I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions.
Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes,
and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you."
--Richard Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
"What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled, and youth would find no room on earth. Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally."
--Will Durant
"I've always had sort of an ironic view of life. My belief system is that when this is over, it's over. That you don't look down from heaven and wait for your loved ones to join you. There may be some soul activity, but I'm not sure about that. But what I am sure about is that your molecules continue and in due time become something else. That's science.
And that works for me. So that if this is it, you better take it at its right proportion. That there are serious things, but most things are temporal and ephemeral, and you should cultivate that attitude. That joy and love and all the verities are what counts. So I try not to take too many things seriously, and if I find myself caught up in the seriousness of the moment, within a period of time, I'm able to cajole myself out of it."
--William Shatner, from the
History Channel documentary How "William Shatner Changed the World"
Death Ain't So Bad
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
--Kozan Ichikyo, on the morning of his death (February 12, 1360, at the age of 77.)
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
--Isaac Asimov
You've been dead before, remember. What was the first 15 billion years of the universe like for you?
--wallern@aol.composter, responding to my fear of missing out on the Universe after I die
"Hey, what's the matter?"
"I'm sad because you're going to die."
"Yeah, that bugs me sometimes too. But not so much as you think... ...When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway."
--Richard Feynman and Danny Hillis.
"If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture -- that is immortality enough for me."
--Edward Abbey
"No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing, but most of the time, we aren't either."
--Marvin Minsky
"After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next
great adventure. You know the Stone was really not such a
wonderful thing. As much money and life as you could want!
The two things most human beings would choose above all--
the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely
those things that are worst for them."
--Dumbledore, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", J.K.Rowling
"You may look upon the future and behold: It will be boring."
--Robert Gilmore
"How do you know I'd be afraid?" Lloyd said, "How do you know that
would be the last thing I'd feel?"
"I don't know that." Shwartz *tick-ticked*ed the pen. "You can never
know. That's what's terrible about death."
"Lots of things you don't know when you're alive. So what's the difference?"
Schwartz's fingers stopped, and he stared at Lloyd as though he had
seen him purely and for the first time.
--Thomas H. McNeely, from "Sheep"
"You are a beautiful person, Doctor. Clearheaded. Strong. But you seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground. From now on, little by little, you must prepare yourself to face death. If you devote all of your future energy to living, you will not be able to die well. You must begin to shift gears, a little at a time. Living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value."
--Haruki Murakami, "Thailand"
"I'll tell you a secret. Something they don't teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."
--Achilles, the movie "Troy"
I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace
to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately I
dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock, but it
would not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped got a shrub,
but it pulled loose, and in cold terror I fell into the
abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative;
there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure
overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle
of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the
cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to
fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens,
I sang to the beauty of the starts and made my peace with the darkness.
--Heinz Pagels, physicist and quantum mechanics researcher before his death in a 1988 climbing accident
"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death."
--Leonardo da Vinci
"My grandfather was a painter ... was looking at me and he said "Harry, there are two kinds of tired, there's good-tired, and there's bad-tired. Ironically enough, bad-tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other peoples agendas, other people's dreams - and when it was all over there was very little "you" in there, and when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn, you don't settle easy. Good-tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost. But you don't have to tell yourself, because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days, and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy - you sleep the sleep of the just, and you can say "take me away". Now, Harry, all my life I've painted... God I would've loved to be more successful, but I have painted and I have painted, and I am good-tired, and they can take me away."
--from Harry Chapin's Gold Medal collection
Related Links
- David Cortesi has made the entire text of his book
Secular Wholeness online, including the chapter Dancing With Mister D. Cortesi offers a way for skeptics to find a kind of spirituality in their lives.
- I considered using this photo by J.S. Drewnicki on the front page of this guide, but couldn't quite figure out how to rearrange the page. Still, it's the most evocative graveyard photo I've ever seen.
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