Barry Lopez Quotes

There is no shame in admitting that the ultimate principle of all the wonders of the universe is unknown to us.

I know that I don’t know.

I know not whence I came, nor whither I go, nor who I am.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

I lose sleep at night wondering whether we are intelligent enough to figure out the universe. I don't know.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

To live is to feel oneself lost.

Do I know there is a God? Some days I don't.

I've always thought of faith as an acknowledgment of not being the biggest thing in the universe.

One of my bywords is that nobody knows anything, including me.

Starting with the lyrics, 'Only scared of myself and the truth in the stars/I'm a king, I'm the dirt, God within me shine,' the first half of '6 Weeks' delves into my attempts to balance the notion that I have an existential purpose with the realization that I am nothing against the vastness of the universe.

So he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and for what purpose he had been placed in the word.

Fundamentally, I have no idea how the world works, though I am trying to figure it out.

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

Man no longer lives in the beginning--he has lost the beginning. Now he finds he is in the middle, knowing neither the end nor the beginning, and yet knowing that he is in the middle, coming from the beginning and going towards the end. He sees that his life is determined by these two facets, of which he knows only that he does not know them

I came alone and I go as a stranger. I do not know who I am, nor what I have been doing.

Someone asked me once what my philosophy of life was, and I said some crazy thing. I should have said, how the hell do I know?

Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread.

And any man who knows a thing, knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all.

Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised, always have the courage to say to yourself-I am ignorant.

So we reach into the raging chaos, and we cling to it, and we tell ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.

To know is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

None of us have much idea where we are. Perhaps all our lives are too concerned with where, and not enough with who.