Nonexistence Quotes

“What foolishness it is to desire more life, after one has tasted
A bit of it and seen the world; for each day, after each endless day,
Piles up ever more misery into a mound. As for pleasures: once we
Have passed youth they vanish away, never again to be seen.
Death is the end of all.
Never to be born is the best thing. To have seen the daylight
And be swept instantly back into dark oblivion comes second.”
― Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

“There's a psychological mechanism, I've come to believe, that prevents most of us from imagining the moment of our own death. For if it were possible to imagine fully that instant of passing from consciousness to nonexistence, with all the attendant fear and humiliation of absolute helplessness, it would be very hard to live. It would be unbearably obvious that death is inscribed in everything that constitutes life, that any moment of your existence may be only a breath away from being the last. We would be continuously devastated by the magnitude of that inescapable fact. Still, as we mature into our mortality, we begin to gingerly dip our horror-tingling toes into the void, hoping that our mind will somehow ease itself into dying, that God or some other soothing opiate will remain available as we venture into the darkness of non-being.”
― Aleksandar Hemon

“So the will's desire for death is not a desire for nonexistence, but a desire for peace. When someone wrongly believes that he will not exist, he desires by nature to be at peace; that is, he desire to exist in a higher degree.”
― Augustine of Hippo, On Free Choice of the Will

“If you can see something, and it is wrong, you can fight it with a reasonable chance of success. Fighting the nonexistent is worse than pointless: Don Quixote tilted at windmills, but at least windmills are real.”
― Mike Klepper

“Time passed. I wasn’t sure how long I lay there among the flowers, behind a huge stone on the hill, fantasizing about a serene nonexistence.”
― Ava Homa, Daughters of Smoke and Fire

“Monsters that live under children's beds have power only because of the child's ignorance. Thus the nonexistent becomes efficacious.”
― Mike Klepper

“test”
― test test

“The ancient Egyptian book of the dead is a series of spells to guide you through your afterlife. If you were in the upper class, everything was arranged so that you'd be buried with the tools necessary to avoid being banished to "nonexistence," (what we call the eventual "fade to black.") But if your pass the "weighing of the heart" ritual and make it to the "two fields," you'll lead an idyllic, "heaven"-like afterlife. . . So, in the end, rich people become like their money. . . When you spend money, it doesn't die. . . it just travels.”
― Dash Shaw, Doctors

“If we state that there is something, this statement confirms and proves the existence of something (even if it is not a confirmation or proof of any particular something). Otherwise, there would be no way to state anything if there was not something in the first place. Even if there is nothing but an illusion in our head, it is still the existence of an illusion in our head, which is something.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Despite scholasticism or skepticism, skepticism is the confirmation and proof of existence. It follows that if we affirm and confirm the existence, we must, at least, accept the context of existence irrespective of its possible manifestations or variations. We can find this context in the relationship of the Absolute and the Relative and the context of Being and Nonbeing, Something and Nothing.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“From the point of existence itself, it is not essential (crucial or philosophically viable) if existence is an illusion or even if the whole existence, in its absolute totality, would be an “illusion,” for the existence of existence is self-explanatory and self-confirmatory, even if it were an illusion.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Paradoxically, the bigger problem arises regarding non-existence or nothingness. How do we define Nothingness? What is Nothingness? If there is Nothing, then we affirm or try to confirm Nothingness (Nonbeing), which means that we establish or attempt to confirm the existence of non-existence or nothingness.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“If we think in this way, then we indirectly state that non-existence is impossible because the very existence of its non-existence denies its non-existence. If we continue following this thought, we may conclude that it sounds so paradoxical that our knowledge, comprehension, the world itself, or, perhaps, our language by which we try to explain and understand it is insufficient.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“By their nature, abstract theoretical questions lead to tremendous philosophic or scientific discoveries. In that sense, they are essential and should be highly encouraged, regardless of how abstract, impractical, or inconceivable they may seem. On the other hand, if such questions only satisfy the fancies of those pursuing an argument for the sake of an argument, they are mainly worthless.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Philosophy must strive to establish common sense (as Thomas Reid would have liked it) as the highest model for its method. We don't want to say that every easy or comprehensible thought and argument should be the basic criteria. This only means that skepticism has limitations.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“If our mind, regardless of being limited, is viewed in the context of reality or existence, then we can assume one existence consisting of all other existences and consider it as one reality of which, most likely, as our experience shows, most parts will not have the complete grasp of its totality. Nevertheless, they will still be able to participate in it, with a larger or smaller amount of knowledge coming from experience (with or without the help of language).”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Even if we assume all Reality, all existence, in its totality, as an illusion, we still affirm and confirm the existence of reality—the existence of existence itself. What matters is existence itself and not the attributes we apply to our idea of reality. If there is existence, then there is a reality. Existence itself is a reality. Our characterization of reality as an “illusion” doesn’t change the fact that there is reality (even if it is a reality of an illusion). If there is a reality, then there can be no illusion about the existence of existence. The only illusion may come from our understanding (or misunderstanding) of reality and its various manifestations and expressions.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“If reality behaves and acts upon us in ways that may seem like an illusion, then this, which appears to us as an illusion, is not a bit removed from reality itself as it is, but only from our understanding of it. Even if we accept illusion as an argument against reality, this is not only a weak argument but also proves what it tries to deny.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“The logical question would follow: Is the purpose of reality an illusion? Or: What would it be if it were not an illusion? Before answering these questions, we would have to define reality and illusion in the best possible way. What is reality? What is illusion? Why can reality not be an illusion to be reality? Would the world be better if everything was literal in an obvious sense? We have to understand that the significant part of reality is its mystery. When reality becomes too real or evident on every level, without mystery, reality loses its purpose and becomes, perhaps, worse than an illusion in our usual sense of the word.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“We gradually arrive at the ethical question of better or worse, which must imply which reality is better or worse. Since this automatically becomes an ethical dilemma, it creates an aesthetic dilemma: Which reality is more beautiful? Or, must all reality, irrespective of all its potential and possible variations, unavoidably comply with or conform to some principle of beauty—the Law of Beauty—which must be the basis of harmony if reality inclines toward a comprehensible and intelligible form, order, and purpose.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“O God! I ask again, what are we? If I look to the years that preceded me, what an infinite space do I see in which I was not! And if I glance to the years ahead, what a horrible succession of years in which I will no longer be! What a small place do I occupy in the immense abyss of time! I am nothing.”
― Jacques Benigne Bossuet

“Existence, devoid of meaning, is meaningless. Meaning is the ultimate goal of both Absolute and existence. However, meaning, although priceless, is not without a price. If the world had no “price,” it would have no meaning. We need some hardship to find meaning in anything. Even when we talk about beauty, we must “earn” it. Only nonexistence is unconditional. Life and existence are conditional and contingent.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“If we look at these ideas or phenomena from this perspective, it becomes easier to understand suffering and “evil” in the world. We shall reevaluate every issue and idea. Do we fully understand the roots of evil and good?”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Nonexistence equates with death in a way. But, for death, something must be born to be able to die. Non-existence excludes both birth and death. On the other hand, everything that does exist is programmed or destined to motion. Without some movement or growth through space and time, there is no actual existence, but rather the non-existence camouflaged in the robe of “non-existing” existence, which was only a dead existence at the same spot forever, without motion, without time, without birth or real death, which equates non-existence.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Existence is in constant motion and growth (regardless of progress or regress), moving through time and space (including entropy) with all its other attributes. Only something alive can contain and reflect these attributes. Existence, in and of itself, is life itself. The ability and capacity to think do not equate to the wholeness of life. Still, life itself equates to existence as a whole, including the existence of inorganic matter or something we are used to calling “dead matter.” Everything that exists, regardless of our conception of it and how it appears to us, is alive. Existence is life.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Beyond existence, there is no death, only non-existence or Non-Being. But without non-existence or Non-Being, the existence of the “material” world would not be possible, and consequently, life would not be possible. Non-existence, or Non-Being, is characterized by an equally important “power” in the existence of existence, or life, itself. (Nonbeing provides or secures the possibility of birth and death or the illusion of transformation.)”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Does the word life reflect life itself as a whole or only an idea of what we think life is and not necessarily what it is? Our traditional thinking limited life to organic matter. Our idea about life is different in that we think everything that exists is alive and is life. Once the word life becomes rich enough to demonstrate and represent the wholeness of the Universe and not our original and narrow idea of organic matter, our idea of existence equating to life becomes more apparent. Thanks to this enrichment of the word life, we realize that our usual and traditional usage of the word life, in the strict and narrow sense, must have been partially wrong and limited. But, if the whole reality of existence, including inorganic matter, becomes life when we use the word life not only in the way we used it traditionally, then even something we call “dead” matter becomes alive. However, we did not treat or consider it as alive before.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Even if we proclaim that life equates to existence, the word life, irrespective of its correct and applicable meanings on various levels, is still insufficient to describe or relate to the totality of life. In the terminological sense, we must enrich the word life to mean or include the whole existence, irrespective of our inherited way of thinking. In this way, the new term of the same word, with an enriched meaning, would be rightly established.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“The life of non-thinking beings does not equate to the existence of all. The sheer existence of anything is proof of its life; otherwise, it would not exist. Only non-existent is not alive. Life would not be possible if existence did not contain life in its totality. What is manifested as life, appearing to us as real life, is only the evolution or transformation of existence, which is already having a life. Our understanding and description of life do not equate with life itself but only with our definition and understanding.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE

“Yes, we exist, we are alive, but our existence is so fragile, so weak that we both exist and do not exist, the two coexist, our existence and our non-existence!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan