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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• 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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• One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Teacher, Pupils, Remains

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.120, Penguin

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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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• I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.

  Woody Allen

  Funny, Life, Witty

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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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• 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 universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

  Carl Sagan

  Cosmos, Benign, Astronomy And Universe

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Book by Carl Sagan, p. 250, 1980.

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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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• 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 begins on the other side of despair.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Inspirational, Life, Philosophical

  Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.9, New Directions Publishing

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• He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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

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• We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

  Hermann Hesse

  Flower, Fall, Heart

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Narcissus and Goldmund: A Novel”, p.157, Macmillan

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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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• All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Motivational, Positive

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• The point is there ain't no point.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Nihilism, No Point

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• We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Want

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• I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

  Albert Camus

  Life, World, Indifference

  Albert Camus (2002). “The Stranger”, Spark Notes

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• Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Responsibility, Destiny, Men

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• Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Mean, Baths

  Delmore Schwartz (1950). “Vaudeville for a princess, and other poems”

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• To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life's neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Profound, Cosmos, Purpose

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• We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

  Charles Bukowski

  Love, Death, Novelists

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “The Captain is Out to Lunch”, p.10, Harper Collins

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  For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

  Carl Sagan

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• A universe without purpose should neither depress us nor suggest that our lives are purposeless. Through an awe-inspiring cosmic history we find ourselves on this remote planet in a remote corner of the universe, endowed with intelligence and self-awareness. We should not despair, but should humbly rejoice in making the most of these gifts, and celebrate our brief moment in the sun.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Depressing, Humble, Self

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• Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Life, Philosophy, Philosophical

  Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.133, New Directions Publishing

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