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Existential Quotes

Browse 659 quotes about Existential.

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Existential Quotes

“Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.”

ProcessPatientTerrorRelateEncountersIsolationExistentialConfrontationPsychoanalysisTherapistsBack AgainPsychotherapy
Book:Existential Psychotherapy
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“In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.”

ThinkingKindFoundLossNumbersGoneStudyAwarenessDuesExistentialImpressiveBereavementConfrontationWidowsWidowers
Author:Irvin D. Yalom
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“If literature is to transcend political interference and return to being a testimony of man and his existential predicament, it needs first to break away from ideology. To be without "isms," is to return to the individual and to return to viewing the world through the eyes of the writer, an individual who relies on his own perceptions and does not act as a spokesman for the people. The people already have rulers and election campaigners speaking in their name.”

PeopleIfsMenWorldNeedsFirstsDoeEyePoliticalLiteratureNamesIndividualBreakReturnPerceptionElectionIdeologyRelyRulersExistentialTestimonyInterferenceThrough The EyesIsmsPredicaments
Author:Gao Xingjian
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“The Internet is really our meeting place. We have this amazing listserv. Every time I log onto it I feel a sense of pride, because if you log on and say, "Oh I was just in San Diego and I was in a park and I saw a lion," the flurry of replies on average is just like--wow! All these existential questions about what it means to be an African, and never having seen a lion at home, but having seen a lion here. Everything you say turns into this real philosophical debate--it's incredible in so many ways. And it's an invigorating place to be.”

IfsWayFeelsMeanRealHomeTurnsSawsPrideInternetPhilosophicalMeetingsIncrediblesAverageDebateParksLionsWowExistentialInvigoratingSan Diego
Author:Chris Abani
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“I think Bergman's films have eternal relevance, because they deal with the difficulty of personal relationships and lack of communication between people and religious aspirations and mortality, existential themes that will be relevant a thousand years from now. When many of the things that are successful and trendy today will have been long relegated to musty-looking antiques, his stuff will still be great.”

PeopleThinkingYearsLongHas BeensStillsTodayFilmStuffReligiousDealsSuccessfulCommunicationThousandEternalDifficultyAspirationThemeMortalityRelevantExistentialThousand YearsRelevanceAntiquesPersonal RelationshipsTrendyBergmanLack Of Communication
Author:Woody Allen
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“I'm only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I'd hope it's rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of "contemporary culture" to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment and a gnawing sense of existential mockery.”

TryingHumansI CanCultureDealsHonestAmbitionLaughterEmptyOptimismBlindDisappointmentContemporaryUpliftingDepressingExistentialMockeryPortrayalBlind Optimism
Author:Chris Ware
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“When I was in college, I remember fearing that the dreary grind of adulthood would feature infinitely more existential dread than frat parties had, but the opposite has been true for me. I'm much less likely to feel that gnawing fear of aimlessness and nihilism than I used to be and that's partly because education gave me job opportunities, but it's mostly because education gave me perspective and context.”

FeelsHas BeensJobsRememberUsedOpportunityPartyEducationCollegePerspectiveOppositesUsed To BeFeaturesDreadAdulthoodExistentialNihilismGrindDrearyJob OpportunitiesAimlessnessFrat Parties
Author:John Green
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“You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.”

LifeAgeHappinessYoungForeverAgingWittyBirthdayRetirementRetiringExistentialEighteenImmatureMy Birthday60th BirthdayGrowing OlderYouthfulnessFunny AgingFunny RetirementBirthdays And AgingBirthday PartyFunny Old Age BirthdayHappy BirthdayYoung And OldYouth And Old AgeAge And YouthInspirational BirthdayFunny AgeAge Of 40Wise BirthdayFunny BirthdayOld BirthdayQuotations Birthday Happy BirthdayOver The HillYoung BirthdayFunny Happy BirthdayRetirement JokesRetirement HumorWitty BirthdayHumorous BirthdayRetirement SpeechFunny Birthday CardFunny Old BirthdayOld Age HumorBest BirthdayFunny Birthday WishesBirthday HumorCelebrate BirthdayFunny 40 Year Old BirthdayBirthday Wishes FunnyYouth FunnyBirthday GreetingsBeing ImmatureHilarious Happy BirthdayMature And ImmatureRetirement Party
Author:Germaine Greer
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“Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that?”

ThinkingKnowsDoneProblemAsksIdentityIntellectualCrisisErrorsWho We AreExistentialIdentity Crisis
Book:Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
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“Polar fleece is a plush, spongy, totally artificial material that weighs nothing and conveys no quality of warmth or coolness; in fact, you can wear it in the most bitter weather or in the hottest heat. Polar fleece looks neither flimsy and light nor hearty and warm. It has no historical, cultural, or physical association with a place, a season, a society, or any living thing. It is the first existential fabric - eminentaly useful, meaningless, dissociated and weird.”

FirstsLooksFactsLightQualityMaterialsSeasonsHistoricalWarmWeatherBitterHeatWarmthMeaninglessAssociationArtificialExistentialFabricLiving ThingsHottestHeartyCoolnessFleece
Book:Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures
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“Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope.”

IfsWorldMatterActionVisionRiskDemandEmpathyEthicsConcernExcuseEncountersEthicalCrucialDogmaExistentialStemMetaphysicsShiftingOur ActionsAgnosticismNo ExcusesCatalystStanceBlurIndecisionFuture LifePrevarication
Author:Stephen Batchelor
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“Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach - see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience - is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.”

HappensActionOpportunityMoralRiskEconomicTypeBearsCostLimitsApproachThreatErrorsTrialsDamageWillingnessExistentialAnticipateForesightProactiveLearning ExperienceTrial And ErrorOpportunities To Learn
Author:Nick Bostrom
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“Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.”

MenNeedsShouldHumansWellsSelfPhilosophyOpportunityExistenceSelf EsteemStriveEsteemExistentialPatheticNihilismShatteredMan And NatureMeaningfulnessPurposefulness
Author:Ray Brassier
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“Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, The 5th Wave, explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us.”

IfsBelieveEndsI BelieveExistenceNovelPossibilityCrisisWaveGenreOutcomesEncountersLatterSci FiExistentialScenariosExistential CrisisExtraterrestrial5th Wave
Author:Rick Yancey
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“It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.”

KindMadeMightUniverseFoundExistenceStageCivilizationImportanceTerrorHonestlyScalesContactEmptinessPossessedExistentialSheerSoloNeuroticCivilisationTruism
Author:Iain Banks
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“Generally speaking there is no irreducible taste or inclination. They all represent a certain appropriative choice of being. It is up to existential psychoanalysis to compare and classify them. Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental possibilities, and the value which haunts it.”

HumansEndsRealityCertainValuesChoicesPossibilityTasteUltimateFundamentalsDetermineCompareAbandonExistentialInclinationPsychoanalysisOntology
Book:Existentialism and Human Emotions
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“You can learn technological things, you can learn about specific things, but the real problems that people deal with in any subject, existential subjects or romantic subjects, you never learn anything. So you make a fool of yourself when you're 20, you make a fool of yourself at 40, at 60 at 80. The ancient Greeks were dealing with these problems. They screwed up all the time. People do now.”

PeopleRealProblemDealsSubjectsFoolAncientGreekExistentialTechnologicalReal ProblemsScrewed UpAncient Greek
Author:Woody Allen
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“There is a core of loneliness. It's partly existential. Secondly, I was raised a loner. My parents were not there. My father was asked to leave because he couldn't metabolize ethanol. Actually, my mother ran away with us when I was 2 months old and my brother was 5. Real dramatic stuff: down the fire escape, through backyards. So, I sort of raised myself. I was alone a lot and I invented myself - I lived through the radio and through my imagination.”

RealMotherFatherStuffParentImaginationFireLonelinessBrotherMonthsRaisedRadioCoreRanDramaticMy BrotherExistentialMy ImaginationLonerBackyardsEthanolFire Escapes
Author:George Carlin
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“In my work, it's simultaneously realities, instead of parallel. Simultaneous avoids the problem of alternate reality. In parallel reality, there's always a hierarchy, and there doesn't necessarily have to be a hierarchy. When you're in a palace like Blenheim, you're supposed to be in awe - why not be in awe of something different than the stuff they're showing you? It's about finding your own existential place.”

DifferentProblemRealityStuffFindingsSupposed To BeAweWorking ItWhy NotExistentialHierarchyParallelsPalacesSimultaneousAlternate Realities
Author:Lawrence Weiner
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