Bryan Magee Quotes

As far as where I go when I die, the concept that I am simple going to flick out, like a light bulb, to me is not only spiritually impossible to believe, but logically it is laughable - the idea that we simply die and nothing happens.

Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence.

I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life - our desire to go on living - our dread of coming to an end.

Either the soul is immortal and we shall not die, or it perishes with the flesh and we shall not know that we are dead. Live, then, as if you were eternal.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

I'm asked so often whether I believe in life after death. I do believe in the sanctity of life, the continuity of life and of energy. I know the anonymity of death has no appeal for me. It is the now that I must face and want to face.

We all waited on an afterlife. Only I planned to be alive for mine.

Heaven is real and hell is real, and eternity is but a breath away.

I believe there are two sides to the phenomenon known as death, this side where we live, and the other side where we shall continue to live. Eternity does not start ith death. We are in eternity now.

Should this my firm persuasion of the soul's immortality prove to be a mere delusion, it is at least a pleasing delusion, and I will cherish it to my last breath.

When you look at the basis for the immortality of the soul, you have these foundationless speculations and really, no intelligent reason for believing that there's life after death.

To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life.

I firmly believe that when you die you will enter immediately into another life. They who have gone before us are alive in one form of life and we in another.

It has been said that the immortality of the soul is a grand peut-tre -but still it is a grand one. Everybody clings to it -the stupidest, and dullest, and wickedest of human bipeds is still persuaded that he is immortal.

The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.

This life is but the childhood of our immortality.

I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out, which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable - and life is more than a dream.

(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.

If it is finally accepted that the personality in whole or part survives death - and I believe that it will be - then such a belief will be considered as modern as a belief in spaceships and rockets.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Either the soul survives death or it does not, and there is no scientific evidence that it does.

If we can prove an afterlife, then we have less pressure to make our physical life last forever.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.