Philipp Maier

“What makes us moral beings is that...there are some acts we believe we ought to die rather than commit...But now suppose that one has in fact done one of the things one could not have imagined doing, and finds that one is still alive. At that point, one's choices are suicide, a life of bottomless self-disgust, and an attempt to live so as never to do such a thing again. Dewey recommends the third choice.”
― Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America

“I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth. The only truth I can understand or express is, logically defined, a lie. Psychologically defined, a symbol. Aesthetically defined, a metaphor.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“I live, which is the main point.”
― Heinrich Heine