Quotes about Existence

That's how the world is, and there is nothing an insignificant nobody like you, or even a significant somebody like me, can do about it.

The mere adding of years to life is not living.

Thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God.

The basic anxiety, the anxiety of a finite being about the threat of non-being, cannot be eliminated. It belongs to existence itself.

Faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by, and turned to, the infinite.

Man is essentially 'finite freedom'; freedom not in the sense of indeterminacy but in the sense of being able to determine himself through decisions in the center of his being. Man, as finite freedom, is free within the contingencies of his finitude. But within these limits he is asked to make of himself what he is supposed to become, to fulfill his destiny.

Ordinary theism has made God a heavenly, completely perfect person who resides above the world and mankind. The protest of atheism against such a highest person is correct. There is no evidence for his existence, nor is he a matter of ultimate concern. God is not God without universal participation. "Personal God" is a confusing symbol.

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. (190)

Nothing truly real is forgotten eternally, because everything real comes from eternity and goes to eternity.

There is no place to which we could flee from God, which is outside of God.