Quotessence
Home / Topics / Existentialism Quotes

Existentialism Quotes

Browse 1101 quotes about Existentialism.

Related topics

ExistentialMenIfsWorldWayExistenceLifeHumansKnowsPhilosophyThinkingMatterWantDiesPeopleFeelsFirstsMomentsPhilosophicalPurposeDoeMean

Existentialism Quotes

“100 Questions of Life 6. What is perfection? Perfection is imperfections we've made peace with. ... 13. What is nature? Nature is order within chaos. 14. What is order? Order is but friendship with chaos. 15. What is chaos? Chaos is order we are yet to understand. ... 21. What is knowledge? Knowledge is ignorance we've chosen to correct. 22. What is choice? Choice is the fulcrum of freedom. 23. What is freedom? Freedom is the fulcrum of responsibility. 24. What is responsibility? Responsibility is the act of backbone. 25. What is backbone? Backbone is more than a stick to hang your head. 26. What is the head? Head is the mightiest carrier of progress. 27. What is progress? Progress is much more than mere functioning of nuts and bolts. 28. What are nuts and bolts? Nuts and bolts are our greatest defense against unforeseen terrors of nature, on earth and beyond. ... 53. What is heritage? Heritage, in moderation, is an aid to growth, unmoderated, poison. ... 57. What is death? Death is but the fear of life. 58. What is fear? Fear is but memory of our animal past. 59. What is memory? Memory is the fabric of time. 60. What is time? Time is the meaning behind moments. ... 78. What is curiosity? Curiosity is a challenge to superstition. 79. What is superstition? Superstition is nature's antidote to the insecurity of the unknown. 80. What is insecurity? Insecurity is wisdom of the jungle against possible predatory attack. 81. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the result of travel in mind, not in time or space.”

Life LessonsFreedomKnowledgePsychologyProgressMemoryExistentialismInsecuritySuperstitionMental Health Awareness
Book:Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science
Create image

“Only love can bring full freedom, all else brings half freedom. What is half freedom you ask? When in the name of freedom you imprison yourself to one side or sect, everything outside that sect seems evil. For example, fundamentalists choose the side of blind faith, and every act of reason seems like blasphemy - just like cold, sharp-tongue intellectuals choose the side of rationality even at the expense of humanity, and everything illogical seems outdated - or wait, I got a better one - so-called social activists often get so attached to their self-imposed identity of victimhood, that every person with a political, corporate, legal or bureaucratic background seems to appear as devil incarnate. This, my friend, is what I call "half freedom", which by the way, is far worse than the lack of freedom. And even though it manifests as an act of willful choice, when you get down to it, it's just plain old rigidity. And if we want to build a truly just, inclusive and progressive society, this hypocritical half-freedom won't do - what's needed is whole freedom - a kind of freedom that liberates the mind of all superstition as well as ignorant suspiciousness. It's time we realize, yelling about justice without using common sense is just as useless as keeping quiet. What this means is that, we gotta come together regardless of our background - the teacher, the scientist, the student, the copper, the politician, the civil servant, the entrepreneur, the economist, the janitor, the construction worker - every single person from every single walk of life must come forward surpassing all suspicious conspiracy, and contribute the best of their capacity in the making of a real civilized world.”

FreedomSocial JusticeHuman RightsHumanitarianExistentialismService Of HumanityPolitical ScienceConspiracy TheoryFreethoughtCivic Duty
Book:Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect
Create image

“The idea that we are better off with one person for the rest of our lives is not an innate truth of existence. It's a belief we want to be true. Forfeiting solitude and independence is a much greater sacrifice than most of us realize. Sharing a habitat, a life, is for sure harder than being alone. In fact, coupled living seems virtually impossible, doesn't it? To find another person to spend all your life with, to age with and change with, to see every day, to respond to their moods and needs?”

RelationshipsSolitudeIndependenceExistentialismCouples
Book:I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Create image

“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 perfect person – an ideal observer – whom is capable of handing down a concrete exemplar of epistemic virtues. We each draw upon the guiding knowledge, theories, and advice available for us in order to explore the paradoxes, ironies, inconsistencies, and the absurdities encountered while living in a supernatural world. We mold our personal collection of information into a practical practicum how to live and die. Each day we define and redefine who we are, determine how we will react today, and chart our quest into an uncertain future.”

StoriesWisdomTruthLife LessonsMemoriesHistoryIdentityWisdom QuotesSelf AwarenessHistoricalMemorySelf RealizationStorytellingLegacyUncertaintyPhilosophy Of LifeLife Lessons QuotesMeaning Of LifeExistentialismPurpose Of LifeLegendsSelf DeterminationTruth Of LifeSelf KnowledgeSelf DevelopmentMeaningful LifePurpose Driven LifePurposeful LivingKnow ThyselfSelf IdentityMemories QuotesLegacy QuotesSelf KnowingPersonal HistoryMeaningfulnessPurposefulSage AdviceExistential AngstMemory QuotesHistorical NovelUncertainties In LifeCode Of ConductSagesPersonal Observation
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
Create image

“The law of karma says that no matter what context I find myself in, it is neither my parents, nor my science teacher, nor the mailman, but I alone who have brought myself into this state because of my past actions. Instead of trapping me in a fatalistic snare, this gives me freedom. Because I alone have brought myself into my present condition, I myself, by working hard and striving earnestly, can reach the supreme state which is nirvana.”

KarmaExistentialismHinduismSelf Determination
Book:The End of Sorrow
Create image

“In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He doesn't know. If a value has lost its concrete content, what is left of it? A mere empty form; an imperative that goes unheeded and, all the more furious, demands to be heard and obeyed. The less Esch knows what he wants, the more furiously he wants it. Esch: the fanaticism of the era with no God. Because all values have hidden their faces, anything can be considered a value. Justice, order—Esch seeks them now in the trade union struggle, then in religion; today in police power, tomorrow in the mirage of America, where he dreams of emigrating. He could be a terrorist or a repentant terrorist turning in his comrades, or a party militant or a cult member a kamikaze prepared to sacrifice his life. All the passions rampaging through the bloody history of our time are taken up, unmasked, and terrifyingly displayed in Esch's modest adventure.”

ValuesOrderNovelSacrificeModernLoyaltyCertaintyExistentialismPurpose Of LifeCultAmbiguitySymbolicFanaticismImperativePost ModernSleepwalkersBrochEsch
Book:The Art of the Novel
Create image

“You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.”

PhilosophyHappinessNovelLaughterAdvertisingMeaning Of LifeExistentialismKitschCzech
Book:The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Create image

“She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death.”

PhilosophyNovelMemoryMeaning Of LifeExistentialismContinuityCzech
Book:The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Create image

“When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said to F. three years before. Too bad for him. The memory might have alerted him, might have helped him see that his choice of medicine was wholly theoretical, made without the slightest self- knowledge. Thus he studied medicine for three years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? He walked down the broad outside staircase of the medical school for the last time, with the feeling that he was about to find himself alone on a platform all the trains had left.”

NovelIdentityExistentialismNarcissismSelf KnowledgeCzech
Author:Milan Kundera
Create image

“He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while the artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. He thought that the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. Perhaps the woman after whom the master shaped his beautiful Madonna is already wilted or dead, and soon he, too, will be dead; others will live in his house and eat at his table- but his work will still be standing hundreds of years from now, and longer. It will go on shimmering in the quiet cloister church, unchangingly beautiful, forever smiling with the same sad, flowering mouth.”

FictionNovelExistentialismHesseNarcissus And GoldmundFear Of Deathth
Author:Hermann Hesse
Create image

“The Liquid Pantomime by Stewart Stafford Time is life’s shareholder: Youth’s dark angel investor, Midlife’s white shark creditor, The old's Arctic blood liquidator. Debt, the fledgling's terra incognita, Misfortune's looking glass kvetch, Chicks for the boardroom wolf pit, Waddling forth in immature escrow. Margin call missives arrive at thirty, Backstick pressures piping up, Distressingly hostile AGM invites, Disbelief morphs into resignation. Cracking knees bear bankruptcy, Written off in a balance sheet's glance, No hibernation in a bear market, Phased out for new stock issues daily. © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

Life LessonsTimeExistentialismHuman ConditionAgeingBankruptcyStock MarketMemento MoriCorporate WorldShareholder
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“If a child says, "I don't care about anything", that is not a sign of a wise child but of a troubled and depressed one. Similarly, adults who withdraw from the world soon get bored. Even lovers, if they retreat to their private love nest for too long, lose interest in each other. We do not thrive in safety and rest. Human existence means "transcendence", or going beyond, not "immanence", or reposing passively inside oneself. It means constant action until the day one runs out of thing to do - a day that is unlikely to come as long as you have breath.”

LifePhilosophyLife LessonsExistentialism
Book:At the Existentialist Café
Create image

“Don't Have to Agree, to Love (Sonnet 1347) You don't have to agree with a person completely, to love them - accept them. There are a few, I disagree with plenty, yet till death, I'll fight for them. Not all that Rumi wrote apply today, yet I love Mevlana like my own brother. Even more of Aquinas are out of date, yet like a friend I love my Thomas. Heart doesn't care about consensus of the brain, Heart only cares for an inexplicable closeness. Intellect has no bearing over heart's closeness, Often intellect is a barrier to life's wholeness. Intellect is boon, but only when it helps wholeness. Being right is not necessarily the mark of goodness.”

AcceptanceToleranceExistentialismHumanistWholenessDisagreementRight And WrongInclusivePeaceful CoexistenceDifference Of Opinion
Book:Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets
Create image

“The Mortal Tempest by Stewart Stafford In the tranquil, shaded crypt, Life's storms batter no more, Historia, the isolated remnant, Of an interior remembrance. The howling gale, a mourner's cry, Icy tendrils reaching to exert, The only possible pressure, On a shell in heedless slumber. A post-mortem death wish, Phantom projection of the morbid, To vacate an urn and soar, Swirling ash in the mortal tempest. © 2021, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

DeathPoetryLossGriefMourningExistentialismMortalityDark PoetryElegyDeath Poems
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“The awareness of mortality casts a bittersweet shadow over the vibrancy of life and love. We exist in a state of impermanence, where beauty fades and connection dissolves. Yet, it is precisely this impermanence that imbues life with its preciousness and love with its urgency. In the face of oblivion, love becomes a defiant act, a bridge we build across the chasm of the ephemeral, a testament to the enduring power of connection in a fleeting existence." The quote's appreciation for love in the face of life's fleeting nature echoes Epicurean ideals. This emphasizes the existentialist concept of living in a finite world and the absurdist notion of creating meaning in the face of nothingness. It highlights love as a way to transcend the impermanence of life and forge a connection that defies the inevitable. The concept of finding meaning and beauty in a world wracked by impermanence aligns closely with the philosophy of Epicurus. Epicureanism emphasizes living a virtuous and pleasure-filled life while minimizing pain. Though often misinterpreted as mere hedonism, Epicurus also stressed the importance of intellectual pursuits, close friendships, and facing mortality with courage. Unfortunately, Epicurus himself didn't write any essays or novels in the traditional sense. Most of his teachings were delivered in letters and discourses to his students and followers. These were later compiled by others, most notably Hermarchus, who helped establish Epicurean philosophy. The core tenets of Epicureanism are scattered throughout various ancient texts, including: *Principal Doctrines: A summary of Epicurus' core beliefs, likely compiled by Hermarchus. *Letter to Menoeceus: A letter outlining the path to happiness through a measured approach to pleasure and freedom from fear. *Vatican Sayings: A collection of sayings and aphorisms attributed to Epicurus. These texts, along with Diogenes Laërtius' Lives and Sayings of the Philosophers, which includes biographical details about Epicurus, provide the best understanding of his philosophy. Love is but an 'Ephemeral Embrace'. Life explodes into a vibrant party, a kaleidoscope of moments that dims as the sun dips below the horizon. The people we adore, the bonds we forge, all tinged with the bittersweet knowledge that nothing lasts forever. But it's this very impermanence that makes everything precious, urging us to savor the here and now. Imagine Epicurus nudging us and saying, "True pleasure isn't a fleeting high, it's the joy of sharing good times with the people you love." Even knowing things end, we can create a life brimming with love's connections. Love becomes an act of creation, weaving threads of shared joy into a tapestry of memories. Think of your heart as a garden. Love tells you to tend it with care, for it's the source of connection with others. In a world of constant change, love compels us to nurture our inner essence and share it with someone special. Love transcends impermanence by fostering a deep connection that enriches who we are at our core. Loss is as natural as breathing. But love says this: "Let life unfold, with all its happy moments and tearful goodbyes. Only then can you understand the profound beauty of impermanence." Love allows us to experience the full spectrum of life's emotions, embracing the present while accepting impermanence. It grants depth and meaning to our fleeting existence. Even knowing everything ends, love compels us to build a haven, a space where hearts connect. It's a testament to the enduring power of human connection in a world in flux. So let's love fiercely, vibrantly, because in the face of our impermanence, love erects a bridge to something that transcends the temporary.”

LossLove Quotes And SayingsExistentialismFleeting LifeHuman ConnectionsImpermenanceEpicurus Philosophy
Author:Monika Ajay Kaul
Create image

“She stampeed. “I am making him run late.” She gave a resolution of exact 60 seconds to herself to see if she can find her diamond necklace or else she would attend the party with out it. She suddenly turned, as if her memory shouted out loud- Its on the chest right there! To her bewilderment, he was standing just a few inches away holding a big mirror in hand. That perplexed her. Not Adam. Not even the fact that her neck was already hosting the necklace. But seeing herself that way, her very own self. As if, she was unapprehended she existed. Adam was expecting a smile on her face, and that she would touch the necklace and say- “Oh my foolish self” but she touched her face and said- “Oh my self...” That was foolish!”

LoveLifeBeautifulLife LessonsLove QuotesExistenceIdentityLove StoryWomanExistentialismWomanhood
Author:Jasleen Kaur Gumber
Create image

“Truth manifests, when you realize within your heart that you are the truth. There is no ultimate objective truth that the humans as a toddling species in the suburbs of one among billions of galaxies, should be concerned of with its ridiculously limited faculties of comprehension. What matters at the present, is the truth that we radiate in our actions both internally and externally.”

TruthActionLife LessonsGoodnessMindfulnessExistentialismHumanistGood DeedsGoodwillPursuit Of Truth
Book:Awakening Diaries: 15 Books Anthology
Create image

“There is a thing that happens with children: If no one is watching them, nothing is really happening to them. It is not some philosophical conundrum like the one about the tree falling in the forest and no one hearing it: that is a puzzler for college freshman. No. If you are very small, you actually understand that there is no point in jumping into the swimming pool unless they see you do it. The child crying, ‘‘Watch me, watch me,’’ is not begging for attention; he is pleading for existence itself.”

ChildrenPhilosophyExistenceAttentionPsychologyPhilosophicalExistentialismChildExistential
Book:Saying Goodbye: A Memoir for Two Fathers
Create image

“But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgments! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress...”

UniverseExistentialism
Book:A Nietzsche Reader
Create image

“You may defy the universe. You may say, 'Let it be irrational, I am not. Let it be merciless, I will have mercy. By whatever curious chance it has produced me, nowt that I am here I will according to human values. I know the universe will win in the end, but what is that to me? I will go down fighting. Amid all the wastefulness I will persevere; amid all this competition, I will make sacrifices. Be damned to the universe!”

UniverseHopeExistentialismNihilismThe UniverseHope Punk
Book:Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays
Create image