Existentialism Quotes

• If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.

  Charles Bukowski

  Book, Soul, Desire

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  However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Light, Darkness, Indifferent

  Interview with Eric Nordern, Playboy, September 1968.

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• I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.

  Jack Kerouac

  I Hate You, Glowing, Pages

  Jack Kerouac (1971). “The Dharma Bums”, p.138, Penguin

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• Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Life, Freedom, Responsibility

  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.167, Open Road Media

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• The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

  Albert Camus

  Freedom, Badass, Bad Ass

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• Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Life, Moments, Illusion

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.11, Open Road Media

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• It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Death, Play

  'Macbeth' (1606) act 5, sc. 5, l. 16

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• Life might just be an absurd, even crude, chain of events and nothing more.

  Haruki Murakami

  Events, Might, Absurd

  Haruki Murakami (2011). “1Q84:”, p.272, Random House

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• Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Truth, Lying, Religion

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• Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. [It is a matter of choice, not chance.] Such is the first principle of existentialism.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Choices, Matter

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• There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

  Albert Camus

  Struggle, Passion, Myth Of Sisyphus

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.73, Vintage

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• Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Life, Spiritual, Witty

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.13, Open Road Media

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• Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Levels, Denial Of Death

  Ernest Becker (1985). “The Denial of Death”, New York : Free Press

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• Let us do something, while we have the chance! ... Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!

  Samuel Beckett

  Fate, Too Late, Chance

  Samuel Beckett (2012). “The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett”, p.71, Faber & Faber

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• I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

  Umberto Eco

  Life, Witty, Powerful

  Umberto Eco (2007). “Foucault's Pendulum”, p.104, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Ideas, Willing, Dies

  The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, (Journals 1A), August 1, 1835.

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• Death is a continuation of my life without me.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Death, Continuation

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.14, Open Road Media

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• Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Wisest Man, Age

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• But how could you live and have no story to tell?

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Stories, Minimalist

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the source of rivers towards their source or plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Sea, Cities

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• What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Mean, Men, Essence

  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.164, Open Road Media

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  Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?

  Albert Camus

  Suicide, Coffee, Optimistic

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• If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

  Martin Heidegger

  Anxiety, Faces, Acknowledge

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• There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.

  Oscar Wilde

  Hypocrisy, World, Demand

  Oscar Wilde (2000). “The Plays of Oscar Wilde”, p.187, Wordsworth Editions

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• Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Graduation, Freedom, Responsibility

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “The Philosophy of Existentialism: Selected Essays”, p.22, Open Road Media

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