Alexander Carmele

“People reasoning on essences may sometimes substitute certitude for probability, even very great probability. But we know nothing about essences and accordingly lose our certitude.”
― Vilfredo Pareto, The mind and society

“Love is more than a cultural ideal; it is a social foundation for the self. Yet, the cultural resources that make it constitutive of the self have been depleted.”
― Eva Illouz, Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation

“Existentialism is not so much an atheism in the sense that it would exhaust itself attempting to demonstrate the nonexistence of God; rather, it affirms that even if God were to exist, it would make no difference—that is our point of view. It is not that we believe that God exists, but we think that the real problem is not one of his existence; what man needs is to rediscover himself and to comprehend that nothing can save him from himself, not even valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense, existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only in bad faith—in confusing their own despair with ours—that Christians are able to assert that we are “without hope.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism

“But he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks that he will get into the temple by the help of art—he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man disappears and is nowhere when he enters into rivalry with the madman.”
― Plato, Phaedrus