Quotes about existentialism

I was still keenly aware as in my childhood of the inexplicable nature of my presence here on earth where had I come from here where was I going? I often thought about these things with a kind of stupefied horror and used to fill my diary with long self-communings

I rebel therefore I exist.

A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation.

A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition you cannot hear him but you see his incomprehensible dumb-show and you wonder why he is alive.

Like a handprint in cementAn indelible mark has been leftMy identity has been bentAt the point where your fingers pressed.Some people leave their marksAll over your identitySome leave beautiful artAnd others graffiti obscenities.

How hollow to have no secrets left you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone.

Youth ends when egotism does maturity begins when one lives for others.

But then a peculiar thing happened. I became extraordinarily affected by the summer afternoons in the laboratory. The August sunlight came streaming in the great dusty fanlights and lay in yellow bars across the room. The old building ticked and creaked in the heat. Outside we could hear the cries of summer students playing touch football. In the course of an afternoon the yellow sunlight moved across old group pictures of the biology faculty. I became bewitched by the presence of the building f

In existential mathematics that experience takes the form of two basic equations: The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

I don't complain about the horror of life I complain about the horror of my life. The only fact I worry about is that I exist and suffer and can't even dream of being removed from my feeling of suffering.

A person is what he says and does that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

Life is merely terrible I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.

It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity no to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise! Life fliesOne thing is certain and the rest is Lies -The Flower that once has blown forever dies.

If you want good luck you must go out there and search for that luck!! Because luck is waiting for you to look for it.

The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic.

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of "world history"- yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.

But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, to which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize [*realisere*] its existence [*Existents*] and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn first to know himself before knowing anything

Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things. They've given up all for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes."Waddington reflected for a little while. "I wonder if it matters what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures th

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.

What matters creative endless toil, When, at a snatch, oblivion ends the coil?

Ama bardağımın dibinde biram ılıksa, aynada koyu renkli lekeler varsa, fazlalıksam; en içten ve en katışıksız acım, ayıbalığı gibi, hem bir yığın et hem gepgeniş bir deriyle ve insanın içine dokunan ıslak, ama kötülük dolu gözlerle sürüklenip hantallaşıyorsa bu benim kabahatim mi?

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

If one shifts the center of gravity of life out of life into the “Beyond” – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its center of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct, all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering.

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

Я почуваюся мов немовля, яке надто довго жило в череві цього світу, аж поки він не став затісним для нього. Це небо придавлює мене, ці будинки накликають напади клаустрофобії. Мені час виходити назовні.

Справжнє порно- це зовсім не хоум-відео про пацанів і дівах, справжнє порно- це найновіші комп'ютерні гаджети, це слогани косметичних компаній і ресторанів швидкого харчування, це дорогі автомобілі й реклама сигарет, скандали й плітки, гласні розслідування проти олігархів і гучні антикорупційні справи - ось справжній хард-кор, що увінчується колективним буккаке з лайків і коментів у соцмережах. І справжнє порно в тому, що ті, в кого цього немає, копіпейстять про це, захлинаючись слиною.

Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interac

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.

J'ai lu les postmodernistes avec un certain intérêt avec même admiration. Mais quand je les lis, j'ai toujours cet horrible sentiment lancinant que quelque chose d'absolument essentiel est oublié. Plus on dit qu'une personne est un produit social, ou un confluent de forces ou fragmentée, ou marginalisée et plus on ouvre tout un nouveau monde d'excuses.

Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?''It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?''What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were am

The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears monstrous, it is true. For I want to compel all dogs th

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 reflecte

Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality―worshipped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with those things whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like t

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the con

Human existence can relate to beings only if it holds itself out into the nothing. Going beyond beings occurs in the essence of Dasein. But this going beyond is metaphysics itself. This implies that metaphysics belongs to the "nature of man." It is neither a division of academic philosophy nor a field of arbitrary notions. Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself. Because the truth of metaphysics dwells in this groundless ground it stands in closest proximity to the con

I am poor—you are my riches; dark—you are my light; I own nothing, need nothing. And how could I own anything? After all, it is a contradiction that he can own something who does not own himself. I am happy as a child who is neither able to own anything nor allowed to. I own nothing, for I belong only to you; I am not, I have ceased to be, in order to be yours.”—Johannes De Silentio, from_Either/Or_

It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular. A systematic ribbon and button maker can become unpopular but essentially is not at all, inasmuch as he does not mean much by the very odd things he says (alas, and this is a popular art!). Socrates, on the other hand, was the most unpopular in Greece because he said the same thing as the simplest person but meant infinitely much by it. To be able to stick to one thing, to stick to it with ethic

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.

We are gods with anuses.

Mother used to say that however miserable one is, there’s always something to be thankful for. And each morning, when the sky brightened and light began to flood my cell, I agreed with her.

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, thats all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen even loveless slavery, even war or death.

We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action.(There is no reality except in action.)

Having just enough life to enjoy being dead.

Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory....everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.

To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.

I can't go on, I'll go on.

The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?

Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in l

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Stored personal memories along with handed down collective memories of stories, legends, and history allows us to collate our interactions with a physical and social world and develop a personal code of survival. In essence, we all become self-styled sages, creating our own book of wisdom based upon our studied observations and practical knowledge gleaned from living and learning. What we quickly discover is that no textbook exist how to conduct our life, because the world has yet to produce a p

[Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive.

the best existential analysis of the human condition leads directly into the problems of God and faith

It is man's unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

Hard as it may sound, no god has saved anything or anyone in human history. It is the humans who have done so.

...he said firmly, "God can help you. All the men I’ve seen in your position turned to Him in their time of trouble." "Obviously," I replied, "they were at liberty to do so, if they felt like it." I, however, didn’t want to be helped, and I hadn’t time to work up interest for something that didn’t interest me.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.

What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.

Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.

Perhaps the Creator of this strange place knows us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps humanity was meant to eternally ponder the purpose and importance of our own existence. If we were assured of either, we’d be intolerable creatures.

This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough t

Time is that by which at every moment all things become as nothing in our hands, and thereby lose all their true value.

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 mea

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.

There are two ways to go to the gas chamber, free and not free.

(…) symbolism did not fall out of heaven or rise out of subterranean depths: it was elaborated like language, by the human reality…

Existentialism, in both its Continental and its Anglo-Saxon versions, is an attempt to solve the problem without really facing it: to solve it by attributing to the individual an empty, lonely freedom, a freedom, if he wishes, to 'fly in the face of the facts'. What it pictures is indeed the fearful solitude of the individual marooned upon a tiny island in the middle of a sea of scientific facts, and morality escaping from science only by a wild leap of the will. But our situation is not like th

man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine. What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it pil

Biology is run by intricate cellular mechanisms. Cellular mechanisms are run by Nature. Thus, the more we attempt to understand Nature, the more we get closer to our existential properties.

As a result of subduing the forces of nature with the tools that we invent, we find ourselves today at the point where the force of our tools has become a greater concern than the forces of nature.

I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A river, suffering because reflections of clouds and tress and not clouds and trees.

I thought of the fate of Descartes’ famous formulation: man as ‘master and proprietor of nature.’ Having brought off miracles in science and technology, this ‘master and proprietor’ is suddenly realizing that he owns nothing and is master neither of nature (it is vanishing, little by little, from the planet), nor of History (it has escaped him), nor of himself (he is led by the irrational forces of his soul). But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? The planet is movin

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

I want the material of things. Humanity is drenched with humanization, as if that were necessary; and that false humanization trips up man and trips up his humanity. A thing exists that is fuller, deafer, deeper, less good, less bad, less pretty. Yet that thing too runs the risk, in our coarse hands, of becoming transformed into "purity", our hands that are coarse and full of words.

The greatest events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow out in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion. We reject the burden of their memory, and have anodynes against them. But the little things, the things of no moment, remain with us.

Existence is where the soul goes to learn how to interpret itself again.

[in the true mad north] of introspection,where 'falcons of the inner eye'dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.

Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, writing books, learning about things, but I’ve been swindled all the same because it’s never anything more.

Living in the present moment is the recurring baptism of the soul, forever purifying every new day with a new you.

Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You needn't look at the sky because it's not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn't to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can't go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy's time nor your c

Take fireflies for example. Try to imagine their beauty, the evanescent beauty of their lives, which don't even last a week.Female fireflies flash their lights only to have intercourse with the males; males twinkle just to have intercourse with the females. And once their mating has finished, they die. In short, their reproductive instinct is the single, absolute reason for fireflies to live. In that simple instinct and their simple world, no kind of sadness can intervene. This is precisely why