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It is good to be a cynic—it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world—we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death—the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

— H. P. Lovecraft

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Philosophy

More quotes by H. P. Lovecraft

The only saving grace of the present is that it's too damned stupid to question the past very closely.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious.

The Allowable Rhyme (1915)

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927)

Memories and possibilities are ever more hideous than realities.

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There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: H. P. Lovecraft (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.