Welk leven, welk genot, zonder de gouden Afrodite

 Verdraag het maar, mijn lief hart! Je hebt al hondser zaken verdragen! - Odysseus 

 We have enough religion to hate each other, but not enough to love each other - Jonathan Swift

Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles; it empties today of its strength - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 

De mensen bewonderen de hoge bergen, de geweldige golven van de zee, de brede stromen van de rivieren, de uitgestrektheid van de oceaan en de omwentelingen van de sterren, maar ze vergeten zichzelf - Augustinus van Hippo (354-430)

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true - James Branch Cabell

De wereld is er altijd geweest en zal er altijd zijn: een eeuwig brandend vuur, nu eens opvlammend en dan weer uitdovend - Heraclitus  

Ik denk al heel lang dat het ware heldendom in deze schijnbare kleinigheden schuilt - hoe je in waanzinnige tijden je leven organiseert en doorstaat, zonder je je gevoel van eigenwaarde te laten ontnemen - Slavoj Žižek

The voices in your head are not who you are - Ruby Wax

Iedere blik die we werpen in onze lust doet realiseren hoe trouweloos ze zijn, onze driften. Tijdens de helderste ogenblikken van mijn begeerte word ik niet bemind, maar een man; bemin ik niet haar, maar een vrouw; is de verwisselbaarheid van mijn lichaam en dat van haar totaal - Willem Jan Otten


Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists … it is real … it is possible … it's yours - Ayn Rand

God is een uitvergrote projectie van wat we niet zijn maar zouden willen zijn: onsterfelijk, almachtig, algoed enzovoort - Ludwig Feuerbach

Ik heb altijd angst voor het leven gekend. En leren leven zonder die angst is de grote taak die ik mezelf heb gesteld - Roger Scruton

Mensenrechten komen uit de aard der zaak toe aan individuen. Ze zijn bedoeld om iemand te beschermen tegen groepsdruk, bijvoorbeeld van een godsdienst. Maar groepsrechten doen precies het omgekeerde: die beschermen de groep tegen de 'gedachten' - denk aan films, boeken, cabaret - van het individu - Paul Cliteur

Voorbij de knechtende moraal van priesters en filosofen, staat het scheppende leven. Overstijg uzelf, hou van het nu, het lot! - Friedrich Nietzsche

Gehoor geven aan het appèl van de ander, transformeert mijn zelfgenoegzaamheid tot verantwoordelijkheid. De ander humaniseert mij - Emmanuel Levinas

If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call in question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it - the life of that man is one long sin against mankind - William K. Clifford (1845 – 1879)  

Richard Dawkins

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.


We live on a planet that is all but perfect for our kind of life: not too warm and not too cold, basking in kindly sunshine, softly watered; a gently spinning, green and gold harvest festival of a planet. Yes, and alas, there are deserts and slums; there is starvation and racking misery to be found. But take a look at the competition. Compared with most planets this is paradise, and parts of earth are still paradise by any standards. What are the odds that a planet picked at random would have these complaisant properties? Even the most optimistic calculation would put it at less than one in a million.

Imagine a spaceship full of sleeping explorers, deep-frozen would-be colonists of some distant world. Perhaps the ship is on a forlorn mission to save the species before an unstoppable comet, like the one that killed the dinosaurs, hits the home planet. The voyagers go into the deep-freeze soberly reckoning the odds against their spaceship's ever chancing upon a planet friendly to life. If one in a million planets is suitable at best, and it takes centuries to travel from each star to the next, the spaceship is pathetically unlikely to find a tolerable, let alone safe, haven for its sleeping cargo.


But imagine that the ship's robot pilot turns out to be unthinkably lucky. After millions of years the ship does find a planet capable of sustaining life: a planet of equable temperature, bathed in warm starshine, refreshed by oxygen and water. The passengers, Rip van Winkles, wake stumbling into the light. After a million years of sleep, here is a whole new fertile globe, a lush planet of warm pastures, sparkling streams and waterfalls, a world bountiful with creatures, darting through alien green felicity. Our travellers walk entranced, stupefied, unable to believe their unaccustomed senses or their luck.


The story asks for too much luck; it would never happen. And yet, isn't that what has happened to each one of us? We have woken after hundreds of millions of years asleep, defying astronomical odds. Admittedly we didn't arrive by spaceship, we arrived by being born, and we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder.


Of course I am playing tricks with the idea of luck, putting the cart before the horse. It is no accident that our kind of life finds itself on a planet whose temperature, rainfall and everything else are exactly right. If the planet were suitable for another kind of life, it is that other kind of life that would have evolved here. But we as individuals are still hugely blessed. Privileged, and not just privileged to enjoy our planet. More, we are granted the opportunity to understand why our eyes are open, and why they see what they do, in the short time before they close for ever.