Existential Quotes - Page 15

• I am gripped by an existential panic.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Panic

  Bret Easton Ellis (2014). “American Psycho: Picador Classic”, p.258, Pan Macmillan

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• A lot of the day-to-day, minute-to-minute struggles are a bit more taken care of, so it allows you to start asking more existential questions like, "What do I want in life? What's going to make me happy?"

  Paul Rust

  Taken, Struggle, Want

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I seem to have come out of the womb with existential angst and wasn't a happy kid, so I've been on a lifelong search trying to discover how to live the best life possible. I committed my life to doing what I could to experience greater happiness, which ultimately led me to write a book on the subject called Happy for No Reason.

  Marci Shimoff

  Book, Writing, Kids

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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• I will not sleep fine if Donald Trump wins and I will not sleep fine is Hillary Clinton wins. Whether you are looking at nuclear weapons, whether you are looking at expanding wars and their blowback, which will not stop as long as those wars continue to expand, or whether you're looking at the climate, in my view, we have no choice. This is an existential moment. We are deciding not only what kind of world we will have, but whether we will have a world or not. I think it's very important to get outside this box that tells us we are powerless, when in fact, we are powerful.

  Jill Stein

  Powerful, War, Sleep

  "Meet Jill Stein, the Woman Determined to Take On Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in November". Interview with Krystal Marie Ball, www.glamour.com. July 25, 2016.

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• The horrors have made the legend of Mandelstam and are inevitably the lens through which we read his work and life. But if there had been no Stalin and no purge, Mandelstam still would have been a poet of severe emotional and existential extremity.

  Christian Wiman

  Emotional, Lenses, Work And Life

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Terrorism is really the only existential threat to America as we know it - as a free country that plays a leading role in the world.

  Graham T. Allison

  Country, World, Terrorism

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• For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.

  Milan Kundera

  Degrees, Doe, Coincidence

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• The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.

  Sonia Sotomayor

  Childhood, Independence, Adults

  Sonia Sotomayor (2013). “My Beloved World”, Vintage

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• What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Men, Bears, Philosopher

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.118, Beacon Press

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• Every increase of needs tends to increase one's independence on outside forces over which one cannont have control and therefore increases existential fear

  E. F. Schumacher

  Independence, Needs, Increase

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• Nobody's happy. What's happy? Happiness is over when the lights come on." The older woman poured herself a glass of sangria. "Screw that," she said quietly. "What?" "Screw that. Wash your mouth out. Who taught you that half-assed existential drivel?

  Armistead Maupin

  Glasses, Light, Half

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

  Rollo May

  Discovery, Interesting, Existentialism

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

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• The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Levels, Existentialism

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• 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

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• Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so tightly around us. But as art chips away at our defenses, it also opens us to healing potentialities that transcend intellectual games and ego-preserving strategies.

  Rollo May

  Art, Healing, Games

  Rollo May (1985). “My Quest for Beauty”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• 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”

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• man is free, in so far as he has the power of contradicting himself and his essential nature. Man is free even from his freedom; that is, he can surrender his humanity

  Paul Tillich

  Men, Humanity, Essentials

  Paul Tillich (2013). “Systematic Theology”, p.32, University of Chicago Press

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• A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Mean, Men, Despair

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.104, Beacon Press

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• The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Boredom, Truth Is

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• We're stronger in the places that we've been broken.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Life, Broken, Stronger

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• I was not popular in school, and I was definitely not a ladies' man. And I had a very painful adolescence, because it was all very strange to me. It wasn't like I got beat up, but the humiliation and isolation, and the existential 'God, I exist, and nobody cares' of being a teenager were extremely pronounced for me.

  Joss Whedon

  Teenager, School, Men

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. September 5, 2001.

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• Consciousness and Healing To proceed very far through the desert, you must be willing to meet existential suffering and work it through. In order to do this, the attitude toward pain has to change. This happens when we accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth.

  M. Scott Peck

  Spiritual, Pain, Attitude

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• In the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life

  Paul Auster

  Art, Mean, Today

  Paul Auster (2011). “Collected Prose”, p.505, Faber & Faber

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• I'm trying to have a moment o' existential dreed here, right? Crivens, it's a puir lookout if a man canna feel the chilly winds o' fate lashing aroound his netheres wi'out folks telling him he's deid, eh?

  Terry Pratchett

  Fate, Men, Wind

  "A Hat Full of Sky". Book by Terry Pratchett, 2004.

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• I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see a wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies.

  Merrill Markoe

  Dog, Sadness, Ceilings

  Merrill Markoe (1992). “What the Dogs Have Taught Me: And Other Amazing Things I've Learned”, Viking Press

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