Robert Silverberg Quotes

To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?

The universe doesn't owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn't owe us a nice warm feeling inside.

The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man.

I find that easier to accept than this all happened out of nothing.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good—nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

Because there is no meaning to be found in the arbitrary nature of things., It's all random. Just as space is blue. And birds fly through it.

Human life is inexplicable, and still without meaning: a fool may decide its fate.

Insect politics, indifferent universe. Bang your head against the wall, but apathy is worse.

Maybe there isn't a God after all, maybe there's only a universe rotating by itself like a millstone.

One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser.

As you learn more and more about the irrelevance of human life to the general mechanism of the universe, the idea of an interested god, becomes increasingly implausible.

There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

In the cosmology that's behind psychology, there is no reason for anyone to be here or do anything.

The universe does not care what we want.

In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.

Does a being who requires meaning find meaning in a universe that has no meaning?

A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is-- blind or not-- a good world to live in, a promising universe.

It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which give us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is - since nothing means anything in itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something.

I don't think we are here for anything. We're just products of evolution. You can say, "Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don't think there's a purpose." But I'm anticipating a good lunch.

A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,' replied the universe. 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.

The secret of the universe is this: The universe doesn't care. That part of the job is yours.