Science Quote by Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus

A Renaissance scientist doesn’t offer comfort here; he offers a blunt behavioral metric. “So long as we do not blow our brains out” drags the lofty question of life’s value down to a crude, bodily threshold: if you’re still here, you’ve already cast a vote. The line reads like proto-empiricism applied to the soul. Don’t trust what people claim about despair, virtue, or meaning; trust what they do. Survival becomes the data point.

Paracelsus lived in an age when “life is worth living” wasn’t a lifestyle slogan but a daily wager against plague, war, and medical ignorance. He challenged university orthodoxy, traveled, treated the poor, and argued that observation should outrank inherited authority. The quote carries that same skepticism toward grand metaphysics. It’s not metaphysical optimism; it’s a refusal to let philosophy float above the body. The body, stubbornly persisting, is the argument.

The subtext is darker than it first appears. He’s acknowledging suicidal ideation as a live possibility, not a taboo. By putting it on the table, he strips away performative piety. Yet he also smuggles in a harsh consolation: meaning doesn’t need to be proved in advance. If you keep choosing tomorrow, you’re already treating life as valuable, even if you can’t articulate why.

It’s a line that sounds cynical until you notice its quiet mercy: the bar for “faith” is simply not opting out. In a world allergic to certainty, that’s an almost scientific kind of hope.