Existentialism Quotes - Page 8

• But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

  Albert Camus

  War, Men, Imagination

  Albert Camus (1962). “The Plague”

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom. I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Able, Limits, Recognition

  Simone de Beauvoir (1948). “The Ethics of Ambiguity”

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Hurt, Pain, Agony

  Jean-Paul Sartre (1946). “The flies (Les mouches): and, In camera (Huit clos)”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

  Antonio Tabucchi

  Teacher, Views, Hygiene

  7 Copy quote

• Walking through the city streets... Is it by mistake or design?

  Lana Del Rey

  Mistake, Cities, Design

  Song: Born to Die, Album: Born To Die, 2012

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance.

  Michel Foucault

  Eye, Waiting, Generations

  Michel Foucault (2000). “Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel”, p.176, A&C Black

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Emptiness, Praying, Immortality

  5 Copy quote

• I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the schemes could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No eye was watching me.

  Joan Didion

  Regret, Eye, Men

  8 Copy quote

• Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense.

  Lewis Black

  Unique, Enough, Drains

  Lewis Black (2005). “Nothing's Sacred”, p.215, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Israel, Nuclear

  4 Copy quote

• The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Adventure, Solitude, Lasts

  Simone de Beauvoir (1969). “A very easy death”, Penguin Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I dropped out of high school when I was 16, after I had a huge argument with my English teacher over the meaning of the word 'existentialism.'

  Craig Ferguson

  Teacher, School, Argument

  4 Copy quote

• We were essentially torn from the Gaian womb, thrust into the birth canal of history, and expelled sometime around the fall of the Roman Empire into the cold hard world of modern science, existentialism and all the rest of it.

  Terence McKenna

  Fall, Empires, World

  8 Copy quote

• It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Suffering, Encounters, Theme

  Viktor E. Frankl (1985). “Man's Search For Meaning”, p.11, Simon and Schuster

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• My favorite word is existentialism. I can't say it and I'm not quite sure what it means.

  Geri Halliwell

  Mean, Favorite Words, My Favorite

  6 Copy quote

• I have resigned from the professional undertaking of coin flipping. I am not here to tell you where gold's going to be. I have no idea. That's my existentialism. I am a student of uncertainty, I have no idea where the stock market is going to be. So when I am creating trades in my portfolio for my clients, I am agnostic. I just want to enhance the probability that I make money come what may.

  Hugh Hendry

  Ideas, Creating, Gold

  7 Copy quote

• Now the basic impulse behind existentialism is optimistic, very much like the impulse behind all science. Existentialism is romanticism, and romanticism is the feeling that man is not the mere he has always taken himself for. Romanticism began as a tremendous surge of optimism about the stature of man. Its aim - like that of science - was to raise man above the muddled feelings and impulses of his everyday humanity, and to make him a god-like observer of human existence.

  Colin Wilson

  Taken, Optimistic, Men

  "Introduction to the New Existentialism". Book by Colin Wilson, p. 96, 1966.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.

  Joan Didion

  Life Changing, Ordinary, Instant

  Joan Didion (2007). “The Year of Magical Thinking”, p.3, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I found motherhood a crash course in existentialism (what is my purpose in life, am I mistress or slave of my destiny, when the hell do I get some sleep?) and [the book] ROOM was the result.

  Emma Donoghue

  Book, Sleep, Motherhood

  "Emma Donoghue Chats About "Room". Interview with Macy Halford, www.newyorker.com. January 21, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Bergman was the first to bring metaphysics - religion, death, existentialism - to the screen. ... But the best of Bergman is the way he speaks of women, of the relationship between men and women. He's like a miner digging in search of purity.

  Bertrand Tavernier

  Men, Digging, Way

  "Ingmar Bergman, Master Filmmaker, Dies at 89" by Mervyn Rothstein, www.nytimes.com. July 30, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.

  Rollo May

  Giving, World, Patterns

  Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Hard Times, Today, Bent

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.116, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Nausea, Want, Fit

  37 Copy quote

• All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.

  Tom Stoppard

  Eye, Nudge, Grotesque

  'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead' (1967) act 1

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

  Rose Tremain

  Panic, Rewriting, Process

  10 Copy quote