“I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.” IfsWayWritingBelieveStillsI CanPoliticalChangedComplicatedExistentialWriting LifeI've Changed Author:Gerald Stern
“If I wrote about "being [abstraction]" I would be ignoring existential issues (such as death, limited-time, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the mystery of consciousness) that I feel affect me most in my life and think about most of the time. Another reason is that it doesn't seem specific or accurate, to me, to write about "being [abstraction]." I think there are some other reasons.” IfsThinkingFeelsWritingReasonSeemsWould BeUniverseConsciousnessIssuesMysteryAccurateExistentialAbstractionArbitraryLimited Time Author:Tao Lin
“I feel connected with people because of their sense of humor, worldview, and what they think and feel about certain existential issues (things not affected, in my view, by if someone rides a horse or drives a car or talks only IRL or only by typing), not how old they are, what they use to convey what they think and feel about certain existential issues, or if we have both watched the same TV shows or looked at the same websites.” PeopleIfsThinkingFeelsUseShowsCertainViewsIssuesCarTvsHorseConnectedAffectedSense Of HumorExistentialTv ShowsWebsiteWorldviewTyping Author:Tao Lin
“I think for a woman, getting older can help, through personal experience, although of course older women are then rendered invisible in our society, another existential crisis.” ThinkingHelpingCoursesCrisisInvisibleOur SocietyExistentialGetting OldGetting OlderPersonal ExperiencesOlder WomenExistential Crisis Author:Kate Zambreno
“I really like that homosexuality is a little bit of an existential puzzle.” LittlesBitsLittle BitExistentialHomosexualityPuzzles Author:Guy Branum
“I seem to have come out of the womb with existential angst and wasn't a happy kid, so I've been on a lifelong search trying to discover how to live the best life possible. I committed my life to doing what I could to experience greater happiness, which ultimately led me to write a book on the subject called Happy for No Reason.” WritingTryingBookReasonSeemsKidsGreaterSubjectsCommittedNo ReasonExistentialWombLifelongAngstExistential AngstHappy Kid Author:Marci Shimoff
“A lot of the day-to-day, minute-to-minute struggles are a bit more taken care of, so it allows you to start asking more existential questions like, "What do I want in life? What's going to make me happy?"” WantCareBitsStruggleTakenMinutesAskingExistentialDay To DayMake Me Happy Author:Paul Rust
“The horrors have made the legend of Mandelstam and are inevitably the lens through which we read his work and life. But if there had been no Stalin and no purge, Mandelstam still would have been a poet of severe emotional and existential extremity.” IfsHas BeensMadeStillsEmotionalPoetHorrorLegendsExistentialSevereLensesExtremityWork And Life Author:Christian Wiman
“There's this existential crisis in America and in the West of, like - who am I? - based on this searching for individual fulfillment, which you don't necessarily have in the East in the same way because you're kind of told what to do. I'm not saying one is better than the other, I'm just saying that's just, like, the reality.” WayKindRealityAmericaIndividualCrisisWestEastFulfillmentExistentialJust SayingExistential Crisis Author:Aasif Mandvi
“I will not sleep fine if Donald Trump wins and I will not sleep fine is Hillary Clinton wins. Whether you are looking at nuclear weapons, whether you are looking at expanding wars and their blowback, which will not stop as long as those wars continue to expand, or whether you're looking at the climate, in my view, we have no choice. This is an existential moment. We are deciding not only what kind of world we will have, but whether we will have a world or not. I think it's very important to get outside this box that tells us we are powerless, when in fact, we are powerful.” IfsThinkingWorldKindLongImportantWarMomentsFactsChoicesWinningSleepViewsPowerfulFineTrumpWeaponsClintonClimateBoxesNuclearNuclear WeaponsExistentialPowerlessExpanding Author:Jill Stein
“All of the action, and the Wild West West fun, crazy, HBO stuff is in there and it's all amazing, but what separates the show [ Westworld] is that it's an existential drama. It's an intellectual nightmare. It is all very much based in reality. A lot of the technologies that we're exploring is stuff that we're working at, right now. All of this is not that far away. It's taking a look at humanity and the state that we're in now and what would happen, if we kept on going the way that we're going and we created this artificial intelligence.” IfsWayLooksStatesShowsRealityHappensActionHumanityFunStuffTechnologyCrazyDramaRight NowIntellectualWestNightmareArtificial IntelligenceArtificialFar AwayExistentialExploringHboWild West Author:Evan Rachel Wood
“I think that the thing is, all those years of creating music or trying to express something of a dark shadow, an existential angst that I have felt most of my life and still feel today, to not be overwhelmed by it. Music, in a way, is a great vehicle, a means by which one can express all these somewhat contradictory feelings.” ThinkingWayFeelsTryingYearsMeanStillsFeelingsTodayFeltDarkCreatingShadowVehicleExistentialOverwhelmedContradictoryAngstExistential AngstCreating Music Author:Annie Lennox
“[Jean-Paul] Sartre was a throwback to the existential period. I'm not really so much into that these days. I went through a period of going over things and looking at them again to see what they were. But I'm into psychiatry type things. I'm into philosophy. I'm into that sort of thing.” PhilosophyTypePeriodsThese DaysExistentialPsychiatryThrowbackPaul Sartre Author:Van Morrison
“All the cliches are true about parenting. All I've ever wanted to do is be a father, but there's this existential mirror that's held up when you have a kid.” KidsWantedFatherMirrorsExistentialCliche Author:John Krasinski
“A related recurring theme is the exploration of how we take for granted the things in our immediate environment that are common and ordinary. Existential blindness, of sorts.” CommonEnvironmentOrdinaryGrantedRelatedThemeExplorationExistentialBlindnessRecurringRecurring Themes Author:Vera Nazarian
“It is obvious that humanity faces existential threats of a global nature. They are global in the sense that is not possible to deal with them unless we resort to global governance.” FacesHumanityDealsThreatObviousExistentialResortsGovernance Author:Torbjorn Tannsjo
“The most fundamental challenge of the anthropocene concerns agency. For those who lived the Enlightenment dream (always a minority but an influential one), agency was taken for granted. There were existential threats to agency (e.g., determinism) but philosophy mobilized to refute these threats (e.g., by defending libertarianism) or to defuse them (e.g., by showing that they were compatible with agency).” PhilosophyDreamChallengesTakenEnlightenmentConcernFundamentalsThreatGrantedAgencyMinoritiesLibertarianismExistentialInfluentialCompatibleDeterminismTaken For Granted Author:Dale Jamieson
“Struggle has a natural place in our life, but the fight or flight syndrome is often false struggle. There are times for that but we can have that reaction in areas of our life where it's not successful. Areas that concern existential issues or qualities of life - like meaning or purpose or love. These things actually come to us more as we let go of struggling to achieve them.” PurposeFightingNaturalQualityStruggleIssuesSuccessfulOur LivesAchieveLetting GoAreasConcernReactionsFlightExistentialQuality Of LifeSyndromes Author:Roger Housden
“There are two kinds of loss of hope, one is the feeling when your pulse slows down and you are going to die, and there's nothing else left. The other loss of hope is when you're living in a country which becomes insecure, and you don't know what the future is. That's existential.” KnowsKindTwoCountryFeelingsDiesLeftLossDown AndExistentialInsecureSlow DownPulse Author:Marina Abramovic
“Israel defined its God and its relation to that God in existential, relational terms. They did not, until quite late, approach the question of one God in an abstract philosophical way.” WayTermLateApproachRelationPhilosophicalIsraelDefinedAbstractExistential Author:Frank Moore Cross
“If I had to choose between the two ways of approaching the deity, I should prefer the existential relational way, to the abstract philosophical way. I think it is truer, or in any case, less misleading, to say that God is an old Jew with a white beard whom I love, than to say that God is the ground of being and meaning, or to say that God is a name denoting the ultimate mystery. I prefer the bold primitive colors of the Biblical way of describing God.” IfsThinkingWayShouldTwoNamesWhiteCasesMysteryColorUltimatePhilosophicalJewAbstractPrimitiveBiblicalExistentialDeitiesBeardTwo WaysDescribingMislead Author:Frank Moore Cross
“I have a very simple mantra and it's this: I want to make black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of black music. That's my big goal. The larger preoccupation is how do we force cinema to respond to the existential, political, and spiritual dimensions of who we are as a people.” PeopleWantBigsSpiritualPoliticalForceGoalBlackSimpleCinemaWho We AreDimensionsExistentialAlienationMantrasPreoccupationBlack MusicSpiritual Dimensions Author:Arthur Jafa
“The caliphate will have been dismantled. It will still be a problem, but that has been our focus because that is the greatest existential threat to U.S. interests.” Has BeensStillsProblemInterestFocusThreatExistential Author:Joe Biden
“One of the dangers [that Donald Trump poses, due to the augmented risk of nuclear war] is unquestionable. Of the two existential threats - the threats to the termination of the species basically and most other species - one of them, climate change, on that I think there's no basis for discussion.” ThinkingTwoWarRiskDangerTrumpBasesThreatClimateSpeciesClimate ChangeDuesNuclearDiscussionExistentialNuclear WarTermination Author:Noam Chomsky
“The blues is also existential and offers a sense of mature reflection that enabled it to be the leitmotif of modern life.” ModernOffersReflectionMatureExistentialModern Life Author:Lewis Gordon
“I don't think Israelis are less critical of corruption than people in Italy, France or America. Israel is special in a different way. There is a daytime Israel and a nighttime Israel. The first is self-confident, pushy and passionate, like other Mediterranean lands. It is hedonistic, materialistic and almost arrogant. During the nighttime, people are terrified, people are filled with existential dreads. These fears aren't baseless.” PeopleThinkingWayFirstsDifferentSelfAmericaLandSpecialFilledPassionateIsraelCorruptionCriticalFranceDifferent WaysArrogantDreadExistentialTerrifiedMaterialisticDaytimeNighttimeSelf ConfidentHedonisticPushy Author:Amos Oz
“When you're in [ Bahamas], it feels like a bunch of islands, with keys and things like that. It's an existential archipelago. It's funny, you try to escape who you are and where you're from, but it's always part of your social DNA.” FeelsTryingSocialKeysWho You AreBunchIslandsExistentialDnaBahamas Author:Tavares Strachan
“The point of reading is to inhabit a consciousness that doesn't belong to the reader, immersing yourself in a life that's wholly realized. And a huge facet of our psychic and existential make-ups is the things we're not proud of, things we didn't ask to experience, the scenarios we flubbed.” ReadingAsksConsciousnessHugeReaderProudExistentialPsychicsScenariosFacetsImmersing Yourself Author:Joshua Mohr
“Rumi is perhaps the greatest mystical poet who ever lived, one of the greatest poets of the Persian language. He was able to express practically all aspects of the spiritual life and our existential situation in the world today as human beings in beautiful Persian poetry.” WorldHumansTodayAbleBeautifulSpiritualLanguageHuman BeingsSituationPoetAspectSpiritual LifeExistentialMysticalWorld TodayPersianPersian Poetry Author:Seyyed Hossein Nasr
“I have kind of an existential crisis. I'm in my late 20s, I get excited by contemporary young culture, but at the same time, I don't want to be the 40-year-old DJ in the club.” KindCultureCrisisExcitedExistential Author:Jacques Greene
“You're faced with creation, you're faced with something very mysterious and very mystical, whether it's looking at the ocean or being alone in a forest, or sometimes looking at the stars. There's really something very powerful about nature that's endlessly mysterious and a reminder of our humanity, our mortality, of more existential things that we usually manage to not get involved with very often because of daily activity.” SometimesHumanityStarsPowerfulCreationInvolvedActivityOceanForestsManageMysteriousMortalityExistentialMysticalRemindersGet InvolvedVery PowerfulDaily Activities Author:Shirin Neshat
“I think that obviously the quest for purpose, or meaning, or understanding to existence is something that I always think about, always deal with. I guess everybody does - that existential crisis of human condition. It's nothing new. But I'd love to come across something that really made me believe in something.” ThinkingBelieveHumansDoeMadePurposeUnderstandingDealsExistenceConditionsCrisisHuman ConditionQuestsExistentialNothing NewExistential Crisis Author:Conor Oberst
“I am afraid of abandonment, and, if you will, in a really existential way, being exposed as a fraud. Everyone's afraid of it, and I definitely am. This is a fear that motivates. Oh, and heights. And getting stabbed.” IfsWayHeightFraudExposedExistentialAbandonment Author:Baron Vaughn
“As a physician who was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, getting drunk on weekends, stressed out about having 35 patients in the hospital, and not being able to help either them or myself, I had my existential crisis way before I met Maharishi. I did meet him and he was an influence, but I met many other people as well.” PeopleHelpingInfluenceCrisisPatientDrunkSmokingWeekendCigaretteExistentialStressedStressed OutGetting Drunk Author:Deepak Chopra
“I'm pretty critical, but I'm also pretty good at letting go once it's done. There's this existential argument that comes in, at some point, when you're over-thinking the songwriting process. There's no guarantee that the more time you spend or the more you concentrate on certain aspects that that's going to produce a better result, especially in the arts. Some of the most brilliant things that someone might do could happen in three minutes because it's something that just occurs to them.” ArtDoneLetting GoArgumentBrilliantSongwritingExistentialWriting Process Author:Chris Cornell
“The idea of family is really one of the only things we can all say we have and we can't run away from. Whether you like your family or not. Whether it's complicated or not, there's something - call it spiritual, call it existential, whatever - that's in you.” RunningSpiritualLike YouComplicatedOur FamilyRunning AwayExistential Author:John Krasinski
“All I've ever wanted to do was be a great dad, and yet there's no stopping this existential mirror that's held up to yourself when you're about to have a kid.” KidsDadExistential Author:John Krasinski
“Donald Trump, he didn't dismantle Eastern European missile defense. He didn't go to Geneva and press a plastic red button. He didn't make fun of Romney for saying Russia was an existential enemy. He didn't have a hot mic exchange with a Russian President saying that he would be more flexible with the Russians after the elections.” FunPresidentEnemyHotElectionExistentialEastern Author:Victor Davis Hanson
“Arts and the Sciences are a natural symbiosis. They stem from the same human existential impulse - exploration. Exploration of what lies beneath the surface, and re-confuguration of elements of what we call reality.” ArtRealityLyingNaturalImpulseExplorationExistentialStem Author:Wole Soyinka
“The entrepreneurial struggle is the same at basically every stage in the sense that there's maybe slightly less risk but strategic issues are generally always the same. Now there's so much existential risk from another company either being able to compete or to disrupt you in the same way you're disrupting somebody else, an entrepreneur needs a real steady partner who has the ability to start working with them in the Seed or the A and be credible and value-add with strategic advice, and just be backstopped by so much capital that you can do any growth round or even a public round.” RealGrowthAbilityStruggleRiskAdviceEntrepreneurSteadyExistentialEntrepreneurial Author:Chamath Palihapitiya
“The most important issues to address are the truly existential threats we face: climate change and nuclear war. On the former, the Republican leadership, in splendid isolation from the world, is almost unanimously dedicated to destroying the chances for decent survival; strong words, but no exaggeration. There is a great deal that can be done at the local and state level to counter their malign project.” WorldImportantWarDoneStrongChanceRepublicanSurvivalThreatClimate ChangeDecentIsolationDedicatedExistentialExaggerationNuclear War Author:Noam Chomsky
“This is my number one priority. I've got a lot of things on my plate. But my top priority is to defeat ISIL and to eliminate the scourge of this barbaric terrorism that's been taking place around the world. Groups like ISIL can't destroy us. They can't defeat us. They don't produce anything. They're not an existential threat to us. It is very important for us to not respond with fear.” WorldImportantThreatDefeatTerrorismPrioritiesExistential Author:Barack Obama
“My reading of the threat from Iran is that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is an existential threat to the State of Israel and to other countries in the region because the other countries in the region will feel compelling requirement to acquire nuclear weapons as well. Now we cannot a second Holocaust.” CountryReadingThreatHolocaustNuclear WeaponsExistential Author:John McCain
“In the next century, we will be inventing radical new technologies - machine intelligence, perhaps nanotech, great advances in synthetic biology and other things we haven't even thought of yet. And those new powers will unlock wonderful opportunities, but they might also bring with them certain risks. And we have no track record of surviving those risks. So if there are big existential risks, I think they are going to come from our own activities and mostly from our own inventiveness and creativity.” ThinkingOpportunityCreativityTechnologyWonderfulRiskTrackRadicalBiologyExistentialSurvivingNew TechnologyInventiveness Author:Nick Bostrom
“The greatest existential risks over the coming decades or century arise from certain, anticipated technological breakthroughs that we might make in particular, machine super intelligence, nanotechnology and synthetic biology. Each of these has an enormous potential for improving the human condition by helping cure disease, poverty, etc. But one could imagine them being misused, used to create powerful weapon systems, or even some kind of accidental destructive scenario, where we suddenly are in possession of some technology that's far more powerful than we are able to control or use wisely.” KindHelpingPowerfulPovertyTechnologyImagineRiskPossessionBiologyHuman ConditionExistentialTechnologicalBreakthroughMisused Author:Nick Bostrom
“There's existential fears I have - losing passion and creativity and just kind of floating through life. When I feel a little lost - pulled away by the noise of what you're supposed to be doing and what your social following is - I go back to the things that inspire me.” KindPassionCreativityInspireLosingExistential Author:Jimmy Chin
“Artists have their existential questions as human beings, and they address these questions in their works. But they are also thinking in a broader sense when they participate in a social and political debate through their works. Often the most important voices of artists in the political and the social debate are focused on originality in their works. We can see this in historical pieces, like "Guernica" by Picasso. "Guernica" was an extremely important manifestation and critique against war, but it was important and powerful because it was also an incredibly original and powerful work of art.” ThinkingArtImportantWarPoliticalArtistPowerfulHistoricalFocusedDebateManifestationOriginalityExistentialCritique Author:Gunnar Kvaran
“These artists all have some kind of message to the public. These messages can be quite personal, maybe about their own existential situation, and it can be about suffering, it can be about questioning of one's existence and so on. They are all telling us very genuine stories, which are touching us in different ways and they are enlightening in different ways. But it's not only the stories themselves, but it's how it is done - that creates the impact of the story. It is not what is said but how it is said. I don't think you can dissociate the content from the form.” ThinkingKindDifferentDoneArtistSufferingExistenceSituationTouchingQuestioningExistentialEnlightening Author:Gunnar Kvaran
“I always think of baseball as so existential. Like, you're just out there in a field, in a big expanse of green grass.” ThinkingLike YouBaseballExistential Author:Kim Gordon