Existentialism Quotes

All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we're afraid to teach ...

Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of s...

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - ...

A myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give signifi...

One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able ...

When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon t...

Artistic symbols and myths speak out of the primordial, preconscious realm of the mind which is powe...

Good art wounds as well as delights. It must, because our defenses against the truth are wound so ti...

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

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering ...

HAMM:Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?NAGG:I didn't know.HAMM:What? What didn't you know?NAGG:That...

CLOV:Do you believe in the life to come?HAMM:Mine was always that.

I can't go on, I'll go on.

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.

The thing that attracted me about philosophy was that it went straight to essentials. I had never li...

(About Sartre...)His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is ...

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, writing books, learning about things, but I’ve been swindled al...

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in sol...

Yet I loathe the thought of annihilating myself quite as much now as I ever did. I think with sadnes...

All she had to do was make the simplest of gestures - open her hands and let go her hold. She lifted...

Have you ever felt in your inmost being, the conscience of others?' again she was trembling, the wor...

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

Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who ...

A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied. And it is not true that the re...

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity.

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of thei...

The continuous work of our life,” says Montaigne, “is to build death.” He quotes the Latin poets: Pr...

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the ris...

In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. If I persist ...

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water...

God! when you think of all the things you could do and yet somehow never do! All the opportunities y...

A normal existence - what could be more irrational? It's fantastic the number of things you're force...

The day had been spent in the expectation of these hours, and now they were crumbling away, becoming...

I hadn't known Chancel very well, but ten days earlier I had seen him laughing with the others aroun...

(…) symbolism did not fall out of heaven or rise out of subterranean depths: it was elaborated like ...

What gave you this idea of an imperfect god?''I don't know. It seems quite feasible to me. That is t...

Tell me something. Do you believe in God?'Snow darted an apprehensive glance in my direction. 'What?...

If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificanc...

It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘w...

Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in t...

If this had not been the case with Abraham, then perhaps he might have loved God but notbelieved; fo...

But it is just as useless for a man to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the ...

Boredom is the root of all evil. It is very curious that boredom, which itself has such a calm and s...

I am poor—you are my riches; dark—you are my light; I own nothing, need nothing. And how could I own...

Come, sleep and death; you promise nothing, you hold everything.

There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life...

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees an...

It is now my intention to draw out from the story of Abraham the dialecticalconsequences inherent in...

Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect fo...

When I was very young and in the cave of Trophonius I forgot to laugh. Then, when I got older, when ...

You are a hater of activity in life; quite right, for before there can be any meaning in activity, l...

Theology sits rouged at the window and courts philosophy's favor, offering to sell her charms to it.

Battle day and night against the guile of oblivion...

It is the thought, not the incidentals of expression, that essentially makes an exposition unpopular...

The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I ne...

If we tried to rely entirely on reason and pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse – a...

As Socrates so philosophically put it, since we don't know what death is, it is illogical to fear it...

Death is the ultimate negative.

Uncertainty is the normal state.

A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, ...

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by...

The doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did b...

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintanc...

We are, for all our polish, of littlestature, and, as human lives,compared with authentic martyrs,of...

Supposing there is no life everlasting. Think what it means if death is really the end of all things...

Polarities of the 'authentic' vs. the 'inauthentic' are easily discernible in recreational modes. Th...

You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technolo...

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation...

If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human ...

Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he find...

Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe...

What emerges from these separate strands of (modern) history is an image of man himself that bears a...

Amid the pointing and the horror the clean flame.

Amid the pointing and the horror, the clean flame.

What else is there to do?

The question of being is the darkest in all philosophy.

Why are we here? We're here to go!

One day about a month ago, I really hit bottom. You know, I just felt that in a Godless universe, I ...

bullshit french post-war rationalizing

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

We are born from a quiet sleep, and we die to a calm awakening

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.

The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the w...

There comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished w...

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.

Au milieu de l'hiver, j'ai découvert en moi un invincible été.

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead ma...

You are only excused for happiness and success if you generously agree to share them. But if one is ...

Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At th...

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or ...

The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

I knew a man who gave twenty years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to ...

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

Don't you think our society is designed to kill in that way? Of course, you've surely heard about th...

The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter - these are the ...

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. ButSisyphus teach...