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Existential Quotes

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Existential Quotes

“One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness - the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others.”

FeelsWarMomentsTurnsConditionsImportanceEnormousEmptinessWeedMarijuanaExistentialNothingnessPointlessCannabisInterruptionsHempMedical MarijuanaSmoking WeedFunny Marijuana
Author:Norman Mailer
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“I am absolutely against positive thinking. You will be surprised that if you don't choose, if you remain in a choiceless awareness, your life will start expressing something which is beyond both positive and negative, which is higher than both. So you are not going to be a loser. It is not going to be negative, it is not going to be positive, it is going to be existential.”

IfsThinkingAwarenessPositive ThinkingHigherNegativeLoserExistentialBeing Positive
Author:Rajneesh
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“When in the evening we are alone with our most existential thoughts, it is then that we come face to face with the most precious truths that we discover in our brief existence in this world. Just before fatigue envelopes us, taking us into sleep. We think of what our lives actually mean. And then we know how lucky we are if we still enjoy consciousness, rationality and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWorldLoveMeanStillsFacesEnjoySleepExistenceConsciousnessKnow HowOur LivesThis WorldLuckyAnd LoveEveningExistentialRationalityFatigueFace To FaceEnvelopes
Author:Michael Kirby
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“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”

PersonsDoeHappinessCausesSidesGreaterEffectsProductsOneselfSurrenderDedicationExistentialPursuedSearch For MeaningSide EffectsMans Search For MeaningAdmonish
Book:Man's Search for Meaning
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“Death is the door from the superficial life, the so-called life, the trivial. There is a door. If you pass through the door you reach another life - deeper, eternal, without death, deathless. So from so-called life, which is really nothing but dying, one has to pass through the door of death; only then does one achieve a life that is really existential and active - without death in it.”

IfsDoeDeathDoorsAchieveDyingEternalDeeperActiveExistentialSuperficialAnother LifeDeathless
Author:Rajneesh
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“When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland. When I went to Sderot and saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year-old boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket, and when I walked among the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, I was reminded of the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map - face of the Earth.”

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Author:Barack Obama
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“The individuation of dharma practice occurs whenever priority is given to the resolution of a personal existential dilemma over the need to conform to the doctrines of a Buddhist orthodoxy. Individuation is a process of recovering personal authority through freeing ourselves from the constraints of collectively held belief systems.”

NeedsBeliefGivenProcessPracticeAuthorityPrioritiesDoctrineBuddhistResolutionExistentialConformConstraintsDharmaOrthodoxyDilemmaBelief SystemsRecoveringIndividuation
Author:Stephen Batchelor
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“Michael Jackson is an extremely productive ethnographer, a serious reader of phenomenological and existential philosophy, and a remarkable writer at a level that one rarely sees in anthropology. Lifeworlds, unsurprisingly, is no exception. The several essays included here fit into an impressive whole that set out a compelling case for a type of ethnography of which Jackson is one of the masters. The writing is strong and the critical reflections impressive. This book defines an approach to anthropology that is resonant enough to challenge the leading models of our time.”

WritingBookEnoughPhilosophyWholeStrongChallengesLevelsCasesSeriousMastersTypeReaderFitApproachModelsReflectionCriticalOur TimeProductiveRemarkableExceptionCompellingExistentialEssaysImpressiveAnthropologyEthnographyCritical Reflection
Author:Arthur Kleinman
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“We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.”

ShowsYoungInspiringPoorWiseParticularBrotherSickEmploymentVulnerableOur SocietyReach OutExistentialSolidarityBrothers And SistersRefugeeElderlyDisabledUnbornMigrantsPeripheryCatholic Pro Life
Author:Pope Francis
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“In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.”

NeedsDoeHas BeensLife IsCreativeDoubtRiskExpressionConcernUltimateOvercomingSafetyConvictionDenyExistentialSymptomsFanaticismRepressionRepressedUnshakableCreative LifeFinitudeUnshakable FaithPharisaism
Book:Dynamics of Faith
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“I can negate everything of that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don't know whether this world has meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.”

KnowsWorldNeedsHumansMeanI CanDesireTermChanceImpossibleConditionsThis WorldDivineSpringLongingUnityChaosSolveNostalgiaClarityAnarchyExistentialSovereignVagueCohesion
Book:The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
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“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.”

PeopleLooksMayPersonsBecomingCapableCapacityCoreDependentHuman ConditionExistentialReducingPossessingParadoxicalCapacity To Love
Author:Rajneesh
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“The desire to live life to its fullest, to acquire more knowledge, to abandon the economic treadmill, are all typical reactions to these experiences in altered states of consciousness. The previous fear of death is typically quelled. If the individual generally remains thereafter in the existential state of awareness, the deep internal feeling of eternity is quite profound and unshakable.”

IfsMindStatesFeelingsDesireIndividualConsciousnessEconomicAwarenessEternityRemainsProfoundReactionsLive LifeAcquireInternalsAbandonExistentialTypicalFear Of DeathAlteredStates Of ConsciousnessTreadmillsUnshakableMore KnowledgeDesire To LiveLive Life To Its FullestAltered StatesAltered States Of Consciousness
Book:The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut's Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition
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“One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don't think I'll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I'm not depressed and I'm on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me - not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.”

IfsThinkingGivingI CanHardLosesAbilityFocusPerformancesGive MeManifestationEmptinessExistentialConsistencyDay To DayAmerican LifeInterruptionsManiaBeing Depressed
Author:Rachel Maddow
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“Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus.”

PeopleWritingBookRealFictionHellComedyWonderfulModernHonestShameOddNervesCaptureChicagoExistentialBizarreParadesNelsonFunny As Hell
Author:Joe Meno
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“A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence. Whether the meaning of existence is only what we put into life by our own individual fortitude, as Sartre would hold, or whether there is a meaning we need to discover, as Kierkegaard would state, the result is the same: myths are our way of finding this meaning and significance.”

WorldWayNeedsGivingStatesIndividualResultsExistenceFindingsPatternsMythNarrativeMake SenseSignificanceExistentialFortitude
Author:Rollo May
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“A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.”

MomentsFactsHelpingCultureGivenSocialDangerParticularTheoryPerspectiveDevelopmentMethodHistoricalRelativeExistentialMoments In TimeSocial ScienceHistorical Perspective
Author:Rollo May
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“Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers--people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.”

PeopleKnowsArtBookHardHelpingStoriesPurposeUnderstandingDefinitionsTalesRuinsLoserExistentialPornographyPessimisticNoirBleakArt Love
Author:Otto Penzler
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“Good therapy, gently but firmly, moves people out of denial and compartmentalization. It helps clients to develop richer inner lives and greater self-knowledge. It teaches clients to live harmoniously with others and it enhances Existential consciousness, and allows people to take responsibility for their effects on the world at large. For me , happiness is about appreciating what one has. Practically speaking,this means lowering expectations about what is fair, possible and likely. It means,finding pleasure in the ordinary.”

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Book:Letters to a Young Therapist: Stories of Hope and Healing
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