Existential Quotes - Page 5

• The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.

  Rollo May

  People, Purpose, Psychotherapy

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• That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let past move your mind; don’t let future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination, is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Memories, Moving

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• I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing. Please don't tailgate: body in trunk.

  Libba Bray

  Tailgates, Body, Trunks

  Libba Bray (2009). “Going Bovine”, p.292, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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• (although anyone with half a brain must surely be mired in existential gloom all the time)

  Kate Atkinson

  Brain, Half, Gloom

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• As women glide from their twenties to thirties, Shazzer argues, the balance of power subtly shifts. Even the most outrageous minxes lose their nerve, wrestling with the first twinges of existential angst: fears of dying alone and being found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian.

  Helen Fielding

  Wrestling, Dying Alone, Balance

  Helen Fielding (2013). “The Bridget Jones Omnibus: The Singleton Years: Bridget Jones's Diary & The Edge of Reason”, p.17, Pan Macmillan

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• there's no forsaking what you love no existential leap as witnessed here in time and blood a thousand kisses deep

  Leonard Cohen

  Kissing, Blood, Leap

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• The brief relief of seeing other people when I leave my room turns into a desperate need to be alone, and then being alone turns into a terrible fear that I will have no friends, I will be alone in this world and in my life. I will eventually be so crazy from this black wave, which seems to be taking over my head with increasing frequency, that one day I will just kill myself, not for any great, thoughtful existential reasons, but because I need immediate relief.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Crazy, Thoughtful, People

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Did television execs have souls? Now, that was an existential question and a half.

  J.R. Ward

  Soul, Television, Half

  J.R. Ward (2011). “J.R. Ward The Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8”, p.2682, Penguin

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• Because of social pressure, individualism is rejected by most people in favor of conformity. Thus the individual relies mainly upon the actions of others and neglects the meaning of his own personal life. Hence he sees his own life as meaningless and falls into the “existential vacuum” feeling inner void. Progressive automation causes increasing alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, and suicide.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Suicide, Fall, People

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• Less and less is life animated through personal discovery, intimacy with others, or self-reflection. While life has become more manageable for many people, it has become commensurately less engaged.

  Kirk J. Schneider

  Reflection, Discovery, Self

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• Existential depression has always annoyed me; it is one of the world's most pointless forms of suffering.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Annoyed, Suffering, World

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• ...history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.

  Paul Tillich

  Names, Doctrine, Crime

  Paul Tillich (1988). “Writings on religion”

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• Yoga is existential, experiential, experimental. No belief is required, no faith is needed - only courage to experience. And that's what's lacking. You can believe easily because in belief you are not going to be transformed. Belief is something added to you, something superficial. Your being is not changed; you are not passing through some mutation.

  Rajneesh

  Believe, Yoga, Mutation

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• When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland. When I went to Sderot and saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year-old boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket, and when I walked among the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, I was reminded of the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map - face of the Earth.

  Barack Obama

  Prayer, Children, Wall

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• I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

  Carrie Brownstein

  Thinking, Knowing, Half

  "Portlandia Brings Out the Fan in Carrie Brownstein" by Scott Thill, www.wired.com. January 06, 2012.

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• Hughes' debut novel, At Dawn, follows a former All-American wrestler, and is there any better metaphor for contemporary American life? We're all wrestling, tussling with the economy, no jobs, doing the best we can. Hughes doesn't flinch from the tough existential questions. He embraces them.

  Joshua Mohr

  Jobs, Wrestling, Dawn

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• Michael Jackson is an extremely productive ethnographer, a serious reader of phenomenological and existential philosophy, and a remarkable writer at a level that one rarely sees in anthropology. Lifeworlds, unsurprisingly, is no exception. The several essays included here fit into an impressive whole that set out a compelling case for a type of ethnography of which Jackson is one of the masters. The writing is strong and the critical reflections impressive. This book defines an approach to anthropology that is resonant enough to challenge the leading models of our time.

  Arthur Kleinman

  Strong, Philosophy, Book

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• The financial system in its current condition poses an existential threat to Western democracy far exceeding any terrorist threat.

  John Lanchester

  Democracy, Financial, Currents

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• In no way can it be uttered, as can other things, which one can learn. Rather, from out of a full, co-existential dwelling with the thing itself - as when a spark, leaping from the fire, flares into light - so it happens, suddenly, in the soul, there to grow, alone with itself.

  Martin Heidegger

  Dwelling, Fire, Light

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• We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.

  Pope Francis

  Inspiring, Wise, Brother

  Pope Francis' Message to Cardinal Kurt Koch On The Occasion of The 10th General Assembly of The World Council Of Churches, w2.vatican.va. October 4, 2013.

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• Believers are increasingly aware that, unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people for whom this existential space is important.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Space, People, Important

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• In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.

  Paul Tillich

  Expression, Safety, Creative

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

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• But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.

  Paul Tillich

  Destiny, Men, Personality

  "Systematic Theology".

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• Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions.

  Paul Tillich

  Believe, Men, Decision

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• Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.

  Albert Camus

  Forever, Psychology, Logic

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.19, Vintage

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