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Existentialism Quotes

Browse 1101 quotes about Existentialism.

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Existentialism Quotes

“I don't do anything for reward, I do everything as a record, a record of conviction - a record of resilience - a record of thunder - a record of sentience. My life is a repository of what is possible if you put your petty tribalisms aside. I leave this repository in your capable hands - draw from it as you will - put it to use as you deem fit.”

SacrificeSocial JusticeOnenessExistentialismService Of HumanityAdvaitaMulticulturalismHumanitarianismReformerSelfless Service
Book:Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations
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“I don't do anything for reward, I do everything as a record, a record of conviction - a record of resilience - a record of thunder - a record of sentience.”

SacrificeConvictionExistentialismSelflessSufismNondualityAdvaitaReformerHumanistic PsychologyHumanitarian Literature
Book:Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations
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“And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!”

DeathExistentialism
Book:The Stranger
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“Take My Life (The Sonnet) Take my life if you want, But nothing can take my sight away. Take my breath if you want, But nothing can take my might away. Take my feet if you want, But nothing can take my journey away. Take my arms if you want, But nothing can take my touch away. Take my tongue if you want, But nothing can take my voice away. Take my bones if you want, But nothing can take my will away. You can erase me from earth if you so desire, But you can't stop my ideas from spreading like wildfire.”

SacrificeEnlightenmentHumanitarianExistentialismPatriotismService Of HumanityHumanistSaviorSonnetEgalitarianism
Book:When Call The People: My World My Responsibility
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“Y permaneció allí, susurrando los nombres de las estrellas a medida que iban abriendo sus flores en lo alto del cielo. Le gustaban mucho las estrellas, pero aquella noche no le sirvieron de consuelo; no bastaron para recordarle que lo que nos ocurre a los que vivimos en la tierra carece de importancia contemplado desde el eterno fulgor de la eternidad. Mirándolas, volvió a pensar en la guitarra tachonada de brillantes, en su relumbrón mundano.”

InspirationalSkyExistentialism
Book:A Diamond Guitar
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“Space Boot Hill: The Urbane Frontier by Stewart Stafford Red hot, white hot, then what? Nostril fleas dancing at dawn, Creating Frankenstein rivals, Great Whites slumming as prawn. Melon farmers of the world unite! We like them big, ripe and juicy, See all the Vegans next Tuesday: Barbara, Doris, Amy and Lucy. And so we dodge the cosmic bullets, Of an Atraxis gunslinger, non-ritual dead, Playing possum, we slip away, Chiming life's aria, eternally spread. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

HumorSpaceHumourScience FictionWesternExistentialismSatireSurrealismSocial CommentaryAbsurdism
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Neurosonnet 2001 Neurons giveth, neurons taketh away. By neurons we forge self, with neurons we fade away. Within neurons cosmos comes to life, within neurons worlds come to end. Neurons are building blocks of walls, as well as the instrument of bridges. There is not one but two cosmos, one made by nature, another by neurons. We are the makers of observable reality, shaped by hopes and biases of our own. Neurons are the birthplace of God, Neurons produce all ghosts and goblins. Life is a concoction of neurochemistry, Boon and bane are both our own making.”

ConsciousnessPsychologyPerceptionMindfulnessExistentialismNeurosciencePsychiatryHuman BrainNeurologyNeurobiology
Book:Neurosonnets: The Naskar Art of Neuroscience
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“...That's exactly it, my dear friend,'' the future rector had once told him regarding Existentialism, when he was already doing postgraduate work in psychology to achieve his doctorate, ''for this is nothing but a noögenic neuroses due to which such people end up feeling as if they were lost in space and time.'' ''That which the Greek Stoics used to call agnoia, isn't it, or the spiritual ignorance of Man,'' the future professor had answered while they were in the university canteen having a coffee together. ''Correct. In fact, noögenic neuroses do not emerge from conflicts between drives and instincts but rather from spiritual and existential problems...”

PhilosophySpiritualSpiritualityConsciousnessPsychologyExistentialismStoicismCosmic ConsciousnessStoicsMaltese
Book:Paceville and Metanoia
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“Dispassionately, reasonably, he contemplated the failutre that his life must appear to be. He had wanted friendship and the closeness of friendship that might hold him in the race of mankind; he had had two friends, one of whom had died senselessly before he was known, the other of whom had now withdrawn so distantly into the ranks of the living that... He had wanted the singleness and the still connective passion of marriage; he had had that, too, and he had not known what to do with it, and it had died. He had wanted love; and he had had love, and had relinquished it, had let it go into the chaos of potentiality. Katherine, he thought. "Katherine." And he had wanted to be a teacher, and he had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of his life he had been an indifferent one. He had dreamed of a kind of integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom, and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. And what else? he thought. What else? What did you expect? he asked himself.”

LifeFailureExistentialism
Book:France: Summer 1940
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“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 life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.”

LifeGodReligionFaithExistenceAtheismMoralityRespectEthicsDebateMeaning Of LifeSelf RespectExistentialismMaterialismAfterlifeNaturalismSupernaturalismSecular Ethics
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“But I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell. Of course, you pretend to be the author. You have to. You think, I now choose to go to lunch, when that monotone beep rings from on high at 12:37. But really, the bell decides. You think you're the painter, but you're the canvas.”

ExistentialismPretendingJohn GreenDepersonalizationDerealizationSimulation Hypothesis
Book:Turtles All the Way Down
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“Thus Peace Begins (The Sonnet) Peace begins with society, Society begins with individuality. Individuality begins with liberty, Liberty begins with accountability. Accountability comes from unity, Unity comes through community. Community comes through diversity, Diversity comes through inclusivity. Inclusivity comes through nonrigidity, Nonrigidity comes through curiosity. Curiosity comes through expansivity, Expansivity comes through evolvability. Evolvability comes through taming animality. Animality is tamed when we prioritize humanity.”

Social JusticeCuriosityExistentialismAccountabilityPolitical ScienceDiversity And InclusionRational ThinkingSocial StudiesCivic DutyPeace Poetry
Book:Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission
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“Every novel says to the reader: “Things are not as simple as you think.” That is the novel’s eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster than the question and block it off. In the spirit of our time, it’s either Anna or Karenin who is right, and the ancient wisdom of Cervantes, telling us about the difficulty of knowing and the elusiveness of truth, seems cumbersome and useless.”

ExistentialismModernismEpistemologyTolstoyCervantes
Book:The Art of the Novel
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“You ask if I miss having my vision. And I give you polite answers and deflections so you won't worry about me. But I'm not afraid of blindness. I made sure when I was young to see everything. The ocean, the sky, every kind of person on Earth, all the animals that were left before they were gone. I even saw space from inside, the Earth as it trailed away behind us - even if only in my mind. I've seen sunrise on Mars and my own baby, though she's nearly grown up now and doesn't talk to me much. "I'm about as afraid to die as I am of being blind. What else is there to do or see? I've seen it all, and all that's left is reminders that it's gone, all of it gone.”

ExistentialismDisabilityAbleismClimate Fiction
Book:Finding Life on Mars: A novel of isolation
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“I've been mistaken to assume that in this little village in the spring, so like a dream or a poem, life is a matter only of the singing birds, the falling blossoms, and the bubbling springs. The real world has crossed mountains and seas and is bearing down even on this isolated village, whose inhabitants have doubtless lived here in peace down the long stretch of years ever since they fled as defeated warriors from the great clan wars of the twelfth century. Perhaps a millionth part of the blood that will dye the wide Manchurian plains will gush from this young man's arteries, or seethe forth at the point of the long sword that hangs at his waist. Yet here this young man sits, beside an artist for whom the sole value of human life lies in dreaming. If I listen carefully, I can even hear the beating of his heart, so close are we. And perhaps even now, within that beat reverberates the beating of the great tide that is sweeping across the hundreds of miles of that far battlefield. Fate has for a brief and unexpected moment brought us together in this room, but beyond that it speaks no more.”

ArtPhilosophyPoetryExistentialismModernismJapanese LiteratureFloating World
Book:The Three-Cornered World
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“Knowing that it is the earth we tread, we learn to tread carefully, lest it be rent open. Realizing that it is the heavens that hang above us, we come to fear the echoing thunderbolt. The world demands that we battle with others for the sake of our own reputation, and so we undergo the sufferings bred of illusion. While we live in this world with its daily business, forced to walk the tightrope of profit and loss, true love is an empty thing, and the wealth before our eyes mere dust.”

ArtPhilosophyPoetryExistentialismModernismJapanese LiteratureFloating World
Book:The Three-Cornered World
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“Then you'll see that debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person. It is a jungle without past or future, without any promise of above all, nor any immediate penalty. The places where it is practiced are separated from the world. On entering, one leaves behind fear and hope. Conversation is not obligatory there; what one comes for can be had without words, and often indeed without money. Ah, I beg you, let me pay honor to the unknown and forgotten women who helped me then! Even today, my recollection of them contains something resembling respect.”

ExistentialismDebauchery
Book:The fall
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“I no longer thought about the fire under us and the endless cold above us, nor about how thin this crust is which divides the fiery porridge from outer space. I only felt that the night was dark and full of life, of snails and moths, of growing plants, and I knew that there were trout and frogs in the brook. Sometimes the frogs here croak all night long, in a great chorus. There are bats and owls, and deer roam the neighboring forests. The flowers have closed. From the hospital there was not a sound. All was silence. Then a great golden tone rose through the night, and it was followed by new tones. The nightingale had begun, and now filled the world with its abnormal voice.”

HopeNatureExistentialism
Book:Kruttårnet
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