Alison Gopnik Quotes

I'm always curious about what happens when we die. And I'd like to think that somehow the spirit goes on. I'd rather not think that it's just about this.

I do fear death. But what I actually fear is not dying. I mean, true, it will be sad. But I know that there is a better place waiting for me.

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

I don't believe there's an afterlife - but I don't believe there's an end to life. Consciousness goes beyond the bounds of your body.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

I think death is just a transition to another state of consciousness.

Perhaps one reason for the falling-off of belief in a continuance of conscious existence is to be found in the quality of life that most of us lead. There is not much in it with which, in any kind of reason, one can associate the idea of immortality.

Everybody is going to die, so people are enthralled by the possibility that they don't have to completely die, that there is something that comes afterward. It's like if you're going to France for the summer, you're going to read up on it. Everyone just wants to know where they're going, or if they're going anywhere.

No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it.

Know one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

The fear of death comes from limited awareness.

Death does not exist.

Dead people never seem to address the obvious - the things you'd think they'd be bursting to talk about, and the things all of us not-yet-dead are madly curious about. Such as: 'Hey, where are you now? What do you do all day? What's it feel like being dead? Can you see me? Even when I'm on the toilet? Would you cut that out?'

The question of Heaven, the question of what happens after death, is one which a lot of people in our culture try to put off as long as they can, but sooner or later it suddenly swings round and looks them in the eye.

Everyone fears the cut of the blade. It doesn't matter after that. I know the spirit survives as there is so much evidence of the survival of the personality in the afterlife.

I don't fear death. I'm not obsessed with it the way everybody else seems to be.

We are eternal beings. We lived as intelligent spirits before this mortal life. We are now living part of eternity. Our mortal birth was not the beginning; death, which faces all of us, is not the end.

I don't think that because you die and move on to somewhere else that you lose your sense of humor.

Most of us believe that we possess some aspect of eternity that will insure some kind of survival beyond death. The only problem with those strategies is they forget that only God is eternal. We are finite.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Corporeal death is not the whole story.

I am a soul. I know well that what I shall render up to the grave is not myself. That which is myself will go elsewhere. Earth, thou art not my abyss!

Should I perchance still feel after my death, I would no longer have any doubt, but I would most certainly give the lie to anyone asserting before me that I was dead.

Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me.