Lucretius Quotes

To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not. For it is to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest blessings of human beings. And yet people fear it as if they knew for certain it is the greatest evil.

How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.

...if one thing frightens people, it is that so much happens, on earth and out in space, the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them, and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.

To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise without really being wise, for it is to think that we know what we do not know.

Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.

What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.

I think we are intrinsically prone to being irrational and superstitious. A lot of it comes from our fear of the unknown and the fear of a lack of control over our fate.

While it's cool to think ghosts exist, I don't want to see one.

A wise God shrouds the future in obscure darkness.

There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery.

It’s been too hard living, but I’m afraid to die. ‘Cause I don’t know what’s up there, beyond the sky.

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.

You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclining to superstition.

You know, it's an interesting think when you consider... The Earth people, who can think, are so frightened by those who cannot: the dead.

I told myself: 'I am surrounded by unknown things.' I imagined man without ears, suspecting the existence of sound as we suspect so many hidden mysteries, man noting acoustic phenomena whose nature and provenance he cannot determine. And I grew afraid of everything around me – afraid of the air, afraid of the night. From the moment we can know almost nothing, and from the moment that everything is limitless, what remains? Does emptiness actually not exist? What does exist in this apparent emptiness?

Not only does God play dice with the world He does not let us see what He has rolled.

It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.

We live thetime that a match flickers; we pop the corkof a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake?

Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand.

Death is wonderful because you can't think about it. How are you gonna think about it?

The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

I think what you can’t see is always what you should be frightened of.