Existentialist Quotes

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Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
Holy Zarquon, did I ask for an existentialist elevator? ~ Douglas Adams
Existentialist quotes by Douglas Adams
There exists a world. In terms of probability this borders on the impossible. It would have been far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. Then, at least, no one would have began asking why there was nothing. ~ Jostein Gaarder
Existentialist quotes by Jostein Gaarder
Nietzsche was not an Existentialist. Existentialism emerged out of the conflict between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the Danish religious writer. ~ Leo Strauss
Existentialist quotes by Leo Strauss
What Kant took to be the necessary schemata of reality,' says a modern Freudian, 'are really only the necessary schemata of repression.' And an experimental psychologist adds that 'a sense of time can only exist where there is submission to reality.' To see everything as out of mere succession is to behave like a man drugged or insane. Literature and history, as we know them, are not like that; they must submit, be repressed. It is characteristic of the stage we are now at, I think, that the question of how far this submission ought to go--or, to put it the other way, how far one may cultivate fictional patterns or paradigms--is one which is debated, under various forms, by existentialist philosophers, by novelists and anti-novelists, by all who condemn the myths of historiography. It is a debate of fundamental interest, I think, and I shall discuss it in my fifth talk.

Certainly, it seems, there must, even when we have achieved a modern degree of clerical scepticism, be some submission to the fictive patterns. For one thing, a systematic submission of this kind is almost another way of describing what we call 'form.' 'An inter-connexion of parts all mutually implied'; a duration (rather than a space) organizing the moment in terms of the end, giving meaning to the interval between tick and tock because we humanly do not want it to be an indeterminate interval between the tick of birth and the tock of death. That is a way of speaking in temporal terms of literary f ~ Frank Kermode
Existentialist quotes by Frank Kermode
Just as the weak, despairing person is unwilling to hear anything about any consolation eternity has for him, so a person in such despair does not want to hear anything about it, either, but for a different reason: this very consolation would be his undoing; as a denunciation of all existence. Figuratively speaking, it is as if an error slipped into an author's writing and the error became conscious of itself as an error; perhaps it actually was not a mistake but in a much higher sense an essential part of the whole production, and now this error wants to mutiny against the author, out of hatred toward him, forbidding him to correct it and in maniacal defiance saying to him: No! I refuse to be erased! I will stand as a witness against you; a witness that you are a second-rate author. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
Existentialist quotes by Soren Kierkegaard
Don't worry if you don't accomplish everything in this life. Fortunately, death overcomes every thing - even the very thing that tried to kill us. ~ Kamand Kojouri
Existentialist quotes by Kamand Kojouri
We are wanderers, place shifters, the cosmic homeless. This is not a modern truth, and Achilles is not some new kind of existentialist hero. It is the oldest truth of all, surviving uncomfortably into the modern world of cities and overkings, diplomacy and accommodation, the power structures and the proliferation of stuff which the Mediterranean world provides. ~ Adam Nicolson
Existentialist quotes by Adam Nicolson
In the end, all any of these religions aim to do is give us hope. The main difference with Buddhism is that it aims to teach us to find hope from within ourselves, rather than seeking outside advice or saviors. It tells us that only we can help ourselves. It's existentialist in that way, and shockingly modern. ~ Dominique Francon
Existentialist quotes by Dominique Francon
"To be is to do," says the existentialist. "One only becomes real (human) at the point of action." ~ Leo Buscaglia
Existentialist quotes by Leo Buscaglia
Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who celebrated the anguish of decision as a hallmark of responsibility, has no place in Silicon Valley. ~ Evgeny Morozov
Existentialist quotes by Evgeny Morozov
He had not the benefit of existentialist terminology; but what he felt was a very clear case of the anxiety of freedom - that is, the realization that one is free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror ~ John Fowles
Existentialist quotes by John Fowles
This scene expresses the basic situation of immaturity; lyricism is an attempt to face that situation: the individual expelled from the protected enclosure of childhood wishes to enter the world, but at the same time, because he is frightened of it, he fashions an artificial replacement world out of his own verse. He makes his poems revolve around him like the planets around the sun; he becomes the center of a small universe in which nothing is alien, in which he feels as much at home as a child inside its mother, for everything here is fashioned only from the substance of his soul. Here he can accomplish everything that is so difficult "outside;" here he can, like the student Wolker, march with a proletarian crowd to make a revolution and, like the virginal Rimbaud, lash his "little girlfriends" because that crowd and those girlfriends are not fashioned out of the hostile substance of an alien world but out of the substance of his own dreams, and they are thus he himself and do not shatter the unity of the universe he has constructed for himself. ~ Milan Kundera
Existentialist quotes by Milan Kundera
The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that "the good" exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
I grew up watching a lot of Italian and French movies, so I want to have that '70s look, in my dream movie. I want that thing that's not so much happening now, that's existentialist. ~ Ayelet Zurer
Existentialist quotes by Ayelet Zurer
Where Voegelin seeks to show the Gnostic nature of modernity, Jonas seeks to show the modern nature of Gnosticism. Jonas draws parallels between ancient Gnosticism and modern, secular existentialism to prove that Gnosticism is existentialist, not that existentialism is Gnostic. For Jonas, both philosophies stress above all the radical alienation of human beings from the world. ~ C. G. Jung
Existentialist quotes by C. G. Jung
Perhaps I can follow a heroic existential nihilist's sterling example of surviving the harshness of reality by employing an attentive narrative examination of my recalcitrant life to extract shards of personal truth and elicit a synthesizing purposefulness of my being from the darkness, anarchy, and chaos of existence. Perhaps through the act of engaging in a deliberative examination of the ontological mystery of being and investigating the accompanying stark brutal doubt that renders a materialistic life intolerably senseless, absurd, and meaningless, I can confront the baffle of being and establish a guiding set of personal values to live by in an indifferent world. Perhaps by using the contemplative tools of narrative storytelling, I can strictly scrutinize the key leaning rubrics veiled within an array of confusing personal life experiences. Perhaps by engaging in a creative act of discovery I can blunt the pain and anguish that comes from the nightmarish experience of suffering from an existential crisis. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Existentialist quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
When love is sweet, the sweetness means its light
And light may keep the truth, when love is pure.
But love is bitter, when it turns to fight.
Lovers in a fight are quite immature.'
From the poem 'A Note on Existentialist Love ~ Marieta Maglas
Existentialist quotes by Marieta Maglas
There are people, moreover, for whom even the absence of God is absent, who are shaken not by the privation of providence but by the privation of the privation, who live in a completely ungoverned and unconsoling world. To use the terms of another religious existentialist of Judaism against him: there is a man who is lonelier than the lonely man of faith, and he is the lonely man of no faith. ~ Zvi Kolitz
Existentialist quotes by Zvi Kolitz
The judicious words of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), the first existentialist philosopher, are apropos to end this lumbering manuscript.
1."One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else."
2."Life always expresses the results of our dominate thoughts."
3."Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are."
4."Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own."
5."Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all."
6."Don't forget to love yourself."
7."Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
8."Life has its own hidden forces, which you can only discover by living."
9."The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, or read about, nor seen, but if one will, are to be lived."
10."Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown."
11."It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate on only what is most significant and important."
12."To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself."
13."Since my earliest childhood, a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic, if it is pulled out I shall die."
14."A man who as a physical being is always turned to the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside of him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him."
15."Just as in earthly life lovers ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Existentialist quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should just live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another--not even for his wife--would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls--young existentialist girls--you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, nonexistentialist people around one. ~ Alexander McCall Smith
Existentialist quotes by Alexander McCall Smith
Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically "meaningful," while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day and have their dealings with other men is consigned to the outer darkness of the "meaningless." Positivism has simply accepted the fractured being of modern man and erected a philosophy to intensify it.
Existentialism, whether successfully or not, has attempted instead to gather all the elements of human reality into a total picture of man. Positivist man and Existentialist man are no doubt offspring of the same parent epoch, but, somewhat as Cain and Abel were, the brothers are divided unalterably by temperament and the initial choice they make of their own being. ~ William Barrett
Existentialist quotes by William Barrett
They are for 'freedom' when it is freedom to kill third-term fetuses or engage in same-sex marriages or stuff coke up their noses; they do not define freedom as anything to do with captive peoples around the world having the chance to escape the tyrannies that constrain them. They like Fidel because he is a thorn in America's side and a sort of dime-store existentialist, and they rhapsodize about his spreading of literacy in Cuba without considering the fact that at the same time that he teaches people to read he tortures writers like Armando Valladares whose books he doesn't like. ~ David Horowitz
Existentialist quotes by David Horowitz
Egin by talking about the kind of existentialist chaos that exists in our own lives and our inability to overcome the sense of alienation and frustration we experience when we try to create bonds of intimacy and solidarity with one another. Now part of this frustration is to be understood again in relation to structures and institutions. In the way in which our culture of consumption has promoted an addiction to stimulation - one that puts a premium on packaged and commodified stimulation. The market does this to convince us that our consumption keeps oiling the economy for it to reproduce itself. But the effect of this addiction to stimulation is an undermining, a waning of our ability for qualitatively rich relationships. ~ Cornel West
Existentialist quotes by Cornel West
Sometimes I wake up in awe that I'm alive. I can't get over that part, so I guess it makes me kind of like an existentialist. ~ Michelle Rodriguez
Existentialist quotes by Michelle Rodriguez
I am a confectionery-based existentialist. ~ Bill Bailey
Existentialist quotes by Bill Bailey
Part of being of a true existentialist is wanting to be what we make ourselves be by the way we choose to act, as opposed to making excuses for the way we act and regretting it. ~ Gary Cox
Existentialist quotes by Gary Cox
In the world according to the positivist, the inspiring thing about scrambled eggs is that any way you turn them they're sunny side up. In the world according to the existentialist, the hopeless thing about scrambled eggs is that any way you turn them they're scrambled. ~ Tom Robbins
Existentialist quotes by Tom Robbins
After he graduated from college, he went to Paris and became an Existentialist. He had a photograph taken of Existentialism and himself sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Pard was wearing a beard and he looked as if he had a huge soul, with barely enough room in his body to contain it. ~ Richard Brautigan
Existentialist quotes by Richard Brautigan
In particular those who are condemned to stagnation are often pronounced happy on the pretext that happiness consists in being at rest. This notion we reject, for our perspective is that of existentialist ethics. Every subject plays his part as such specifically through exploits or projects that serve as a mode of transcendence; he achieves liberty only through a continual reaching out towards other liberties. There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future. Every time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence into the 'en-sois' – the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence. This downfall represents a moral fault if the subject consents to it; if it is inflicted upon him, it spells frustration and oppression. In both cases it is an absolute evil. Every individual concerned to justify his existence feels that his existence involves an undefined need to transcend himself, to engage in freely chosen projects. ~ Simone De Beauvoir
Existentialist quotes by Simone De Beauvoir
To an Ohio boy, it represented world-weary Gallic shrugs and Gauloises cigarettes, existentialist thinkers in berets and Catherine Deneuve in nothing at all - French was the language of intellectual power and effortless sex appeal. ~ Michael Dirda
Existentialist quotes by Michael Dirda
Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms or, better, in existentialist terms. ~ Rudolf Bultmann
Existentialist quotes by Rudolf Bultmann
A minimal level of sportsman ethics afield is mandated by written law. Beyond that, say, when an action is legal but ethically questionable, or when (as Aldo Leopold long ago pointed out) no one is watching, hunter ethics is an individual responsibility. As the existentialists would have it, we determine our own honor minute by minute, action by action, one decision at a time. ~ David Petersen
Existentialist quotes by David Petersen
one of her eyes was lower than the other, which gave her a distinguished look, and if she seemed to squint a little, it was not because she had bad vision but because one of her eyes had simply got stuck while staring beyond the treshold of the infinite into the very center of an equilateral triangle, into the very heart of being, or, as a chatolic existentialist put it, her defective eye symbolized the diamond's eternal blemish. ~ Bohumil Hrabal
Existentialist quotes by Bohumil Hrabal
She was by no means one of the great refusers. Not an existentialist hero, or a Rosa Parks, or even a Bartleby. ~ Renata Adler
Existentialist quotes by Renata Adler
The existentialist says at once that man is anguish. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
Empty Spaces

I wanted to feel less.
To not be burdened by emotion,
To not feel sadness,
To not know loss.
I envied the inanimate,
The trees that stand proudly in winter,
Not missing their leaves.
I wanted to be weightless,
To not experience limitation.
I didn't want time to pass,
The blur of days, months, years.
It moved too quickly,
I wanted to grasp on,
Hold it.
It eluded me,
Intangible,
Like light.
I wanted to preserve life before you were gone.
I didn't want to know grief.

But the pain kept me connected.
It meant that I loved you,
It meant that I would always be a little broken,
It meant that our love filled all of the empty spaces.
It meant that you would be with me... forever. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn
Existentialist quotes by Jacqueline Simon Gunn
You are the illusion. The person in the mirror is real. ~ Isaac Hooke
Existentialist quotes by Isaac Hooke
Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters. ~ David Simon
Existentialist quotes by David Simon
Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke. ~ Wislawa Szymborska
Existentialist quotes by Wislawa Szymborska
But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other. He wished each of his acts, indeed each day, each hour, each second of his life to be measured against the supreme criterion, which is death. That was why he wanted to march at the head of the column, to walk on a tightrope over an abyss, to have a halo of bullets around his head and thus to grow in everyone's eyes and become unlimited as death is unlimited ... ~ Milan Kundera
Existentialist quotes by Milan Kundera
The existentialist will not ask, "What is this thing?" but "What does this thing signify for me?" Thus he will put the altogether subjective "significance" in place of the objective nature, which is not only the height of absurdity but also of pride and insolence. As true greatness " signifies" nothing for the little man, he will see in it only a kind of infirmity the better to be able to enjoy his own "significant" inflatedness. ~ Frithjof Schuon
Existentialist quotes by Frithjof Schuon
What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, "Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions." But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
Him yelling, Give me lust, baby. Flash. Give me malice. Flash. Give me detached existentialist ennui. Flash. Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. Flash. ~ Anonymous
Existentialist quotes by Anonymous
Whereas a belief in an absurd world arises out of the fundamental disharmony of a person searching for meaning in an apparently meaninglessness universe, an existential nihilist displays impassive intellectual stoicism towards their eventual mortality while embracing a passionate artistic commitment to munity against the underlying syndrome of insignificance and confusion encasing life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster
Existentialist quotes by Kilroy J. Oldster
Minnows and catfish can recognize each member of their own species by his particular, person-specific odor. It is hard to imagine a solitary, independent, existentialist minnow, recognizable for himself alone; minnows in a school behave like interchangeable, identical parts of an organism. But there it is. ~ Lewis Thomas
Existentialist quotes by Lewis Thomas
He's a typical existentialist. And that's a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. ~ Johnny Rich
Existentialist quotes by Johnny Rich
Existentialist literature provides a more satisfactory account of the persistence of feminine narcissism. Simone de Beauvoir makes use of the existentialist conception of 'situation' in order to account for the persistence of narcissism in the feminine personality. A woman's situation, i.e., those meanings derived from the total context in which she comes to maturity, disposes her to apprehend her body not as the instrument of her transcendence, but as 'an object destined for another.'

Knowing that she is to be subjected to the cold appraisal of the male connoisseur and that her life prospects may depend on how she is seen, a woman learns to appraise herself first. The sexual objectification of women produces a duality in feminine consciousness. The gaze of the Other is internalized so that I myself become at once seer and seen, appraiser and the thing appraised. ~ Sandra Lee Bartky
Existentialist quotes by Sandra Lee Bartky
War is noble and heroic if a nation is defending its sovereignty from the invaders. War is disgraceful and unheroic, a despicable crime against humanity, if a dominant nation is invading another country and killing its innocent men, women, and children. The war, in the 21st century, is ostensibly the methodic game theory in offensive action that has no ethical and moral ground, whatsoever, but to intentionally kill and divide people, and, consequently, paralyze the political and economic stability of another nation. ( - Danny Castillones Sillada, The Existentialist Homo Technologicus) ~ Danny Castillones Sillada
Existentialist quotes by Danny Castillones Sillada
Do not however suppose that the conclusion to be drawn will turn out to be one of despair. Angst is an intermittently fashionable emotion and the misreading of some existentialist texts has turned despair itself into a kind of psychological nostrum. But if we are indeed in as bad a state as I take us to be, pessimism too will turn out to be one more cultural luxury that we shall have to dispense with in order to survive in these hard times. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre
Existentialist quotes by Alasdair MacIntyre
From the Absolute to the Relative-from the Infinite to the Finite-from the Undifferentiated to the Differentiated-from the Unconditioned to the Conditioned and again from the Relative to the Absolute. That is the whole truth of the inexistance to the existentialist, formless to the form, Creator to the Creature, one to the every being, absolute to the inabsolute and vis-á-vis, soforth every single thing is temporary, non-existed, so do I, the dream that I dreamed off is simply a 'lie and impermanent too' same as in the mortal world whatever I do experience. ~ Upanishad
Existentialist quotes by Upanishad
Back at my teaching and editing jobs I imagined the new world we were trying to create would be enduring and absolutely better than any world we had inherited. For me, if an idea was purported to be new, it looked a lot better than any idea that seemed to be old. Most theologians I knew were trying to discover some new way of looking at the old ideas of God, humanity, sin and salvation. I was there to teach theology, but theology itself was in search of legitimation. What I was really doing might more accurately be described as promoting Rogerian psychology, wealth-distribution, demytholgy and existentialist ethics than studying God. Theology was desperately in search of a method, whether it was borrowed form cutting-edge philosophy, social theory or political life, as long as it didn't begin with revelation. ~ Thomas C. Oden
Existentialist quotes by Thomas C. Oden
There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian ... and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom ... I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Existentialist quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre
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