Existential Query Quotes

How does a cosmos without a bearded, bathrobed God in the sky pull off all the things that a bearded, bathrobed guy in the sky was supposed to have pulled off? If there was no God who said 'Let there be light,' where did we get all that light?

Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

Is that all souls are for? For when we die?" "No. They're for living, too.

God is the explanation of all things.

What Plato was really asking was perhaps why a horse was a horse, and not, for example, a cross between a horse and a pig.

I always wondered if there was a purpose to the universe, if there was a plan, if there was some sort of organizing factor, hopefully that I played a role in.

Fortunately, in her kindness and patience, Nature has never put the fatal question as to the meaning of their lives into the mouths of most people. And where no one asks, no one needs to answer.

We’re all alive, but we don’t know why or what for; we’re all searching for happiness; we’re all leading lives which are different and yet the same.

I kept looking for a logic that would explain life. It never occurred to me that instead love is the vital synthesis.

The grand question of life is, Is my name written in heaven?

The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything... Is... Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.

Riddle of destiny, who can show What thy short visit meant, or know What thy errand here below?

God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.

The universe is an intelligence test.

There was no religion in my life growing up. Did God invent us or did we invent God?

I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?

If you look through all the different cultures. Right from the earliest, earliest days with the animistic religions, we have sought to have some kind of explanation for our life, for our being, that is outside of our humanity.

The final mystery is oneself.

You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?

A priest's life is spent between question and answer-- or between a question and the attempt to answer it. The question is the summary of the spiritual life.

If you see the sunset, does it have to mean something? If you hear the birds singing does it have to have a message?

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.