Existentialism Quotes - Page 6

• It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths.

  Rollo May

  Discovery, Interesting, Notes

  Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.25, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Death, Rocks, Two

  Speak, Memory (1951) ch. 1

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• All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world.

  Albert Camus

  Fate, Men, Joy

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.117, Vintage

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• Live as long as you please, you will strike nothing off the time you will have to spend dead.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Time, Long, Strikes

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.66, Stanford University Press

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• The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life-that is the heart of existentialism.

  Walter Kaufmann

  Philosophy, Heart, School

  Walter Kaufmann (2016). “Existentialism From Dostoevsky To Sartre”, p.10, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• So when you're dealing with an existential threat like death or like climate change, if you see it as 'we are all toast anyway,' then denial is a pretty good way of coping.

  Bob Inglis

  Way, Climate, Denial

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• No one can advise and help you, no one. There is only one way: go within.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Way, Helping, Advise

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• What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come

  Samuel Beckett

  Blessed, Confusion, Waiting

  Samuel Beckett (2011). “Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts”, p.78, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• if we possess a why of life we can put up with almost any how.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Ifs

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2004). “Why I am So Wise”, p.72, Penguin UK

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• Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Truth, Atheism

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.41, Vintage

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• It wasn't the New World that mattered... Columbus died almost without seeing it; and not really knowing what he had discovered. It's life that matters, nothing but life - the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Discovery, Knowing, World

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868-1869.

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• Why does man create? Is it man's purpose on earth to express himself, to bring form to thought, and to discover meaning in experience? Or is it just something to do when he's bored?

  Bill Watterson

  Men, Bored, Doe

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• He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Giving Up, Years, Games

  "The Age of Reason". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1945.

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• Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powerful and chaotic. Both symbol and myth are ways of bringing order and form into this chaos.

  Rollo May

  Powerful, Speaks Out, Order

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• I can't go on. I'll go on.

  Samuel Beckett

  Grieving, Tragedy, Goes On

  The Unnamable (1959)

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• Life ceases to be so oppressive: we are free to give our own lives meaning and purpose, free to redeem our suffering by making something of it.

  Walter Kaufmann

  Giving, Suffering, Meaning Of Life

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• It's a waste to chase the pipe dream of a magical tiny theory that allows us to make quick and detailed calculations about the future. We can't predict and we can't control. To accept this can be a source of liberation and inner peace. We're part of the unfolding world, surfing the chaotic waves.

  Rudy Rucker

  Dream, Inner Peace, Surfing

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• Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action. (There is no reality except in action.)

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Reality, Action

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• The Theatre of the Absurd is a theatrical embodiment and manifestation of existentialism. It is part reality and part nightmare

  Martin Esslin

  Reality, Theatre, Embodiment

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• The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.

  Albert Camus

  Men, Giving, Tragedy

  Albert Camus (2008). “Notebooks, 1951-1959”, Ivan R Dee

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• The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

  Anton Chekhov

  World, Metaphysics, Courses

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• It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

  Blaise Pascal

  God, Heart, Reason

  Blaise Pascal (1966). “Pascal Pensées”, Penguin Classics

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• When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

  Rollo May

  Reality, Humans, Dependent

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.27, Jason Aronson

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• You are also the physician who must watch over yourself. But in the course of every illness there are many days in which the physician can do nothing but wait.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Waiting, Over You, Physicians

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2010). “Letters to a Young Poet”, p.81, New World Library

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• One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.

  Rollo May

  Able, Readiness, Persons

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.38, Jason Aronson

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