Quotessence
Home / Topics / Existentialism Quotes

Existentialism Quotes

Browse 1101 quotes about Existentialism.

Related topics

ExistentialMenIfsWorldWayExistenceLifeHumansKnowsPhilosophyThinkingMatterWantDiesPeopleFeelsFirstsMomentsPhilosophicalPurposeDoeMean

Existentialism Quotes

“There is life in walking, but death in running - there is life in communication, but death in talking - there is life in awareness, but death in judgement - so, be the life my friend, without the judgement, without the talking, without the running - simply be the life, full with sparkling communications, revelatory awareness and heart-warming walks.”

LifeInspirationalPhilosophyLife LessonsLife QuotesLife PhilosophyExistentialismJourney Of LifeWalk Of LifeEnjoying The Journey
Book:Time to Save Medicine
Create image

“Last Words. It will be recollected that the Emperor Augustus, that terrible man, who had himself as much in his own power and could be silent as well as any wise Socrates, became indiscreet about himself in his last words; for the first time he let his mask fall, when he gave to understand that he had carried a mask and played a comedy, - he had played the father of his country and wisdom on the throne well, even to the point of illusion! Plaudite amici, comoedia finita est! - The thought of the dying Nero: qualis artifexpereo! was also the thought of the dying Augustus: histrionic conceit! histrionic loquacity! And the very counterpart to the dying Socrates! - But Tiberius died silently, that most tortured of all self-torturers, - he was genuine and not a stage-player! What may have passed through his head in the end! Perhaps this: " Life - that is a long death. I am a fool, who shortened the lives of so many! Was I created for the purpose of being a benefactor? I should have given them eternal life: and then I could have seen them dying eternally. I had such good eyes for that: qualis spectator pereo!" When he seemed once more to regain his powers after a long death-struggle, it was considered advisable to smother him with pillows, - he died a double death.”

DeathDyingExistentialismLast WordsAncient Rome
Book:The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
Create image

“Try this thought experiment. Stare directly at the sun; take an unblinkered view at your place in existence; attempt to live without the protective railings many religions offer—that is, some form of continuation, immortality, or reincarnation, all of which deny death’s finality.”

DeathReligionAtheismDyingExistentialismLife And DeathSecularAtheistic Philosophy
Book:Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death
Create image

“Tell me something. Do you believe in God?' Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What? Who still believes nowadays?' 'It isn't that simple. I don't mean the traditional God of Earth religion. I'm no expert in the history of religions, and perhaps this is nothing new--do you happen to know if there was ever a belief in an...imperfect God?' 'What do you mean by imperfect?' Snow frowned. 'In a way all the gods of the old religions were imperfect, considered that their attributes were amplified human ones. The God of the Old Testament, for instance, required humble submission and sacrifices, and and was jealous of other gods. The Greek gods had fits of sulks and family quarrels, and they were just as imperfect as mortals...' 'No,' I interrupted. 'I'm not thinking of a god whose imperfection arises out of the candor of his human creators, but one whose imperfection represents his essential characteristic: a god limited in his omniscience and power, fallible, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his acts, and creating things that lead to horror. He is a...sick god, whose ambitions exceed his powers and who does not realize it at first. A god who has created clocks, but not the time they measure. He has created systems or mechanisms that serves specific ends but have now overstepped and betrayed them. And he has created eternity, which was to have measured his power, and which measures his unending defeat.' Snow hesitated, but his attitude no longer showed any of the wary reserve of recent weeks: 'There was Manicheanism...' 'Nothing at all to do with the principles of Good and Evil,' I broke in immediately. 'This god has no existence outside of matter. He would like to free himself from matter, but he cannot...' Snow pondered for a while: 'I don't know of any religion that answers your description. That kind of religion has never been...necessary. If i understand you, and I'm afraid I do, what you have in mind is an evolving god, who develops in the course of time, grows, and keeps increasing in power while remaining aware of his powerlessness. For your god, the divine condition is a situation without a goal. And understanding that, he despairs. But isn't this despairing god of yours mankind, Kelvin? Is it man you are talking about, and that is a fallacy, not just philosophically but also mystically speaking.' I kept on: 'No, it's nothing to do with man. man may correspond to my provisional definition from some point of view, but that is because the definition has a lot of gaps. Man does not create gods, in spite of appearances. The times, the age, impose them on him. Man can serve is age or rebel against it, but the target of his cooperation or rebellion comes to him from outside. If there was only a since human being in existence, he would apparently be able to attempt the experiment of creating his own goals in complete freedom--apparently, because a man not brought up among other human beings cannot become a man. And the being--the being I have in mind--cannot exist in the plural, you see? ...Perhaps he has already been born somewhere, in some corner of the galaxy, and soon he will have some childish enthusiasm that will set him putting out one star and lighting another. We will notice him after a while...' 'We already have,' Snow said sarcastically. 'Novas and supernovas. According to you they are candles on his altar.' 'If you're going to take what I say literally...' ...Snow asked abruptly: 'What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?' 'I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is the only god I could imagine believing in, a god whose passion is not a redemption, who saves nothing, fulfills no purpose--a god who simply is.”

PhilosophyGodTruthScienceTimeReligionBeliefSpaceEmotionExistenceTheoryEvolutionConversationDespairMythologyTheologyImmortalityExistentialismMortalityImperfectionSpace ExplorationCreationism
Book:Solaris
Create image

“Water has to be the right temperature, For it to appease our human thirst. Too cold, it'll give you frost-bite, Too hot, and it'll burn your throat. Intellect has to be rightly moderated, For it to push mind and society upward. Too little, it facilitates superstition, Too much, and it turns the mind cold.”

FactsHumanismIntelligenceIntellectExistentialismSuperstitionRational ThinkingIntellectualismLogical ThinkingScience Poetry
Book:Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World
Create image

“Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said that you should just live in a way which made you feel real, and that the real thing to do was the right thing too. Mma Ramotswe had listened in astonishment. You did not have to go to France to meet existentialists, she reflected; there were many existentialists right here in Botswana. Note Mokoti, for example. She had been married to an existentialist herself, without even knowing it. Note, that selfish man who never once put himself out for another--not even for his wife--would have approved of existentialists, and they of him. It was very existentialist, perhaps, to go out to bars every night while your pregnant wife stayed at home, and even more existentialist to go off with girls--young existentialist girls--you met in bars. It was a good life being an existentialist, although not too good for all the other, nonexistentialist people around one.”

PhilosophyMoralityExistentialism
Book:Morality for Beautiful Girls
Create image

“The Tentacled Maws by Stewart Stafford Unhook the mind, Put honesty in dispute, From chosen blood, Comes officious brute. Tentacled things taking, Malicious, maladroit maws, In a hubris blizzard blind, Behind lupine power doors. Irradiated golden pockets, Ragged wretches starving, Dynasties sprouting weeds, Names on plaques for carving. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PoetryPovertyGreedExistentialismDystopianSurrealismSocial CommentaryAllegoryPolitical SatireCosmic Horror
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“कविता उन में विलीन हो रही है, वह कविता में और शेष है सिर्फ असीम अखंडित आनंद जो एक अखंड शून्य की भाँति अगणित भागों में खण्डित हो रहा, किन्तु प्रत्येक भाग वही पूर्ण शून्य है।”

PhilosophySpiritualityConsciousnessExistentialismMysticismMetaphysicsAdvaitaPoetic ProseIndian PhilosophyShunyata
Book:त्रिकूट: धर्म का चक्रव्यूह
Create image

“I promised me that it will all be poetry. Instead, it was and was and was big nothing, materialized in loss.”

ArtPoetryDespairMeaning Of LifeExistentialismIntrospection
Book:SONG FOR YOU / CÂNTEC PENTRU TINE (Bilingual English–Romanian Edition / Ediție bilingvă engleză–română / 2025): Poems of Love, Madness & Resurrection / ... nebunie și renaștere
Create image

“The Scavenger's Ledger by Stewart Stafford The scratch of a nib on paper Tells me I am alive, I think. At this Heaven/Hell midpoint— A torn throat for a poison drink. The horizon lit up again tonight, Rebels fight for futile freedom, Happiness, a cold, distant stranger, No gifted transfusion to bleed him. Willingly failing the audition of life, Food appears to have lost all taste, A numb tongue or cheap ingredients, I cannot let one crumb go to waste. They’ve finally cured me of love, Stripped every vestige of me away, Carrying my grave upon my back, Their snail slithers from day to day. © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

PhilosophyDespairIsolationExistentialismDystopianGothicTotalitarianismContemporary PoetryDark PoetryOrwellian
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“There exists a depth of suffering that defies language, a ruin so absolute that it leaves no space for sentiment or redemption. When all is taken—when the body fails, when the world turns its back, when even the will to feel is stripped away—what remains is not resilience, not strength, but a hollow persistence. And yet, if there is anything to take from such an existence, it is this: survival is not proof of hope, nor is suffering proof of weakness. Sometimes, life continues not because of the promise of better days, but simply because it does. And in that, perhaps, there is its own kind of truth.”

TruthSufferingDespairSurvivalPerseveranceTraumaResilienceExistentialismEnduranceNihilism
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Schizophrenia
Create image

“Was there nothing left in this world that was worth opening your eyes and fighting for? Would the bad guys always win? Are our efforts to live in peace simply doomed to failure? Will the bad guys always be bad guys? Will the good guys spend their whole lives taking punches and throwing rocks into the water with all of their might and getting nothing more in return than a ridiculous sploosh and the shame of failure?”

JusticeMoralityDespairPerseveranceResilienceExistentialismIdealismHopelessnessFutilityDisillusionment
Book:The Laws of the Skies
Create image

“My whole life is behind me. I see it completely, I see its shape and the slow movements which have brought me this far. There is little to say about it: a lost game, that’s all. I had lost the first round. I wanted to play the second and I lost again: I lost the whole game. At the same time, I learned that you always lose. Only the rascals think they win. Now I am going to be like Anny, I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.”

LifeLossDespairLife And LivingExistentialismSartre
Book:Nausea
Create image

“A man ten times regrets having spoken, for the once he regrets his silence. And why? Because the fact of having spoken is an external fact, which may involve one in annoyances, since it is an actuality. But the fact of having kept silent! Yet this is the most dangerous thing of all. For by keeping silent one is relegated solely to oneself, no actuality comes to a man’s aid by punishing him, by bringing down upon him the consequences of his speech. No, in this respect, to be silent is the easy way. But he who knows what the dreadful is, must for this very reason be most fearful of every fault, of every sin, which takes an inward direction and leaves no outward trace.”

WisdomSinSilenceResponsibilityDespairExistentialismSpeaking
Book:The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
Create image

“Dying with hopelessness is to die in despair. Hope is to know the certainty of uncertainness. It is not to quantify the uncertainness as this act itself is the act in despair, but it is to know the certainty of the existence of uncertainness. To know how certain is the ‘uncertain’. The temporality of existence is uncertain, and to know the certainty of that uncertainness is to know the inevitability of death.”

HopeFreedomDespairContemplationExistentialismContradictionIntrospectionEpistemologyMetaphysical QuotesExistentialist
Book:Memoir: The Cathartic Night
Create image

“There is no single god. There can never be a single god. For there to be one face, there must be another. The Nah’ruk did not see it in such terms, of course. They spoke of forces in opposition, of the necessity of tension. All that binds must be bound to two foci, at the minimum. Even should a god exist alone, isolated in its perfection, it will come to comprehend the need for a force outside itself, beyond its omniscience. If all remains within, Destriant—exclusively within, that is—then there is no reason for anything to exist, no reason for creation itself. If all is ordered, untouched by chaos, then the universe that was, is and will ever be, is without meaning. Without value. The god would quickly comprehend, then, that its own existence is also without meaning, and so it would cease. It would succumb to the logic of despair.”

DespairExistentialismDichotomyDualism
Book:Dust of Dreams
Create image

“But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man’s lot would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in what is good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless for them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave. I could see the return of barbaric codes, of implacable gods, of unquestioned despotism of savage chieftains, a world broken up into enemy states and eternally prey to insecurity. Other sentinels menaced by arrows would patrol the walls of future cities; the stupid, cruel, and obscene game would go on, and the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror. Our epoch, the faults and limitations of which I knew better than anyone else would perhaps be considered one day, by contrast, as one of the golden ages of man.”

WarTimeEvilExistenceHistoryExistentialismFutility
Book:Memoirs of Hadrian
Create image

“The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining on mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

DeathEvilUnderstandingExistentialismMothersPatrician
Book:Unseen Academicals
Create image

“If you think your life is worth nothing, just zoom out, and you'll realize, in the vastness of space and time, the entire humankind is worth nothing. What's a mere 70-80 years, live it out anyway! What you got to lose, except your meaninglessness! Life's meaning comes from life, life's meaning is measured by life. Live life to lift up those around, that's the greatest meaning of life you can find.”

Life LessonsGoodnessMeaningHuman LifeMeaning Of LifeExistentialismService Of HumanityHumanistGood LifeLife Purpose
Book:World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets
Create image

“Kindness is intention absolute, Goodness is belief absolute. Service is wisdom absolute, Humanity is education absolute.”

KindnessGoodnessHumanitarianExistentialismService Of HumanityHumanistAltruismAdvaitaPeaceful CoexistenceHumanistic Psychology
Book:Yüz Şiirlerin Yüzüğü (Ring of 100 Poems, Bilingual Edition): 100 Turkish Poems with Translations
Create image

“Book of Destiny (The Sonnet) The book of destiny is the being, Who doesn't believe in destiny. The epitome of victory is the one, Who doesn't care for victory. Victory and destiny all are born, Of the sweat and blood of the determined. Annihilate the self for a purpose, And you'll be the icon of universal uplift. You don't fall by falling at someone's feet, You fall by climbing on top of others' head. You don't rise by being superior to others, But by losing sense of high 'n low divisiveness. Mark me well, human is neither person nor species. Designation Human is the highest of all responsibilities.”

SuccessLife LessonsDestinyVictoryExistentialismSelf DeterminationSocial ResponsibilityHumanitarian PoetryTo Be HumanServant Leaders
Book:Bulldozer on Duty
Create image

“People are the alpha - people are the omega - no law, science, art and religion should ever forget that. Law exists so long as it has the consent of the people - science exists so long as it has the consent of the people - art exists so long as it has the consent of the people - religion exists so long as it has the consent of the people.”

PeopleLawDemocracyProgressDemocraticBrainy QuotesHumanitarianExistentialismService Of HumanitySocial Responsibility
Book:Ain't Enough to Look Human
Create image