Ryan Scheuring > Ryan's Quotes

“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of "world history"- yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Untruth: Selected Writings

“Every true faith is infallible. It performs what the believing person hopes to find in it. But it does not offer the least support for the establishing of an objective truth. Here the ways of men divide. If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search.”
― NIETZSCHE FREDERICH

“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason

“The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions … and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the “divine irresponsibility” of the condemned man.”
― Jean Paul Sartre

“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty; the thought can in an instant transport us into the most distant regions of the universe; or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never was seen, or heard or, may yet be conceived; not is any thing beyond the power of thought, except what implies as absolute contradiction.”
― David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause”
― David Hume

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg

“Never memorize something that you can look up.”
― Albert Einstein

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”
― Albert Einstein

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
― Albert Einstein

“Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.”
― Albert Einstein

“Suffering is part and parcel of extensive intelligence and a feeling heart.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space