Best 642 quotes in «existentialism quotes» category

Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.

The process of rewriting is enjoyable, because you're not in that existential panic when you don't have a novel at all.

The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.

A Christian is supposed to be in the world, and yet not of the world--a Both/And as perplexing and demanding as the Either/Or that precedes the life of faith. I'm at once a pure, beautiful, genderless soul, but at the same time a gendered body full of flaws, sins, and wanting. This contradiction, the Both/And, is the Cross.

(About Sartre...) His death does not separate us. My death will not bring us together again. That is how things are. It is in itself splendid that we were able to live our lives in harmony for so long.

When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death.

A bad girl is a myth. Every female exist in the world is equally awesome . You call them bad because they do not act the way you want. You are jealous of the girls who choose freedom over mental slavery.

About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.

A Chinese proverb: Outside of sky there is sky, outside of people there are people. It is the idea of infinity and also that there will always be someone better than you.

A death may be a death, or early warning of existential threat or out-of-context problem. Nothing occurs in isolation. The world’s doom ripples back and forth through time.

After ten pages I felt that Nietzsche was reading me, not I him.

A farmer can toil harder when a respite is promised at the end of the day and a feat at the end of the year. In the same manner, a human can live ferociously because death is promised at the end. “Teacher, what do you mean by the feat and rest? What is the relationship between?” The teacher answers, “forgetfulness, of every labor and sweats, and of himself in that condition.” Winter becomes bearable by the presence of forthcoming greens, marriage by children, letters by knowledge, urban by nature and canticle by beauty.

Afternoon experience: autographing exposed legs, outstretched in lines like matchsticks. Afternoon epiphany: Those with smooth, hairless legs would soon lose all evidence of my contact when the sweat causes the ink from the marker to run. I am ephemeral. Skepticism would be the reaction to those with thick leg hair, as their curls frazzle the lines of my name outward illegibly. Among the scaly-legged, I flaked off immediately, like I never was at all.

Ağaçlar arasında bir ağaç, hayvanlar arasında bir kedi olsaydım, bu yaşamın bir anlamı olurdu, daha doğrusu bu sorunun hiç anlamı olmazdı, çünkü dünyadan bir parça olurdum, oysa şimdi tüm yakınlık gereksinimimle onun karşısındayım. Öylesine önemsiz olan bu us, işte beni tüm evrenin karşıtı yapan bu.

aku telah melakukannya"--kata ingatanku. "aku tidak mungkin telah melakukannya"--kata kesombonganku dan tetap tidak tergoyahkan. akhirnya--ingatanku menyerah

A human being will rarely admit this to you, but they tend to be terrified of living forever. They were born and raised with the understanding that their lives would end. They've achieved everything they wanted to achieve, all the ills that plagued them. And now boredom is their only enemy. And they get up in the morning and fight it every day of their eternal lives. Recreation and play sustain them. Football sustains them. And if you find yourself in a football game that's such a gargantuan task, that seems undefeatable, that will claim eons of your time and your passion? I think that makes you one of the lucky ones.

A kind of joy came upon him, as if borne in on a summer breeze. He dimly recalled that he had been thinking of failure-as if it mattered. It seemed to him now that such thoughts were mean, unworthy of what his life had been.

All religions are man-made; God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.

All kinds of things are happening to me." I begin. ,,Some I choose, some I didn't. I don't know how to tell one from the other any more. What I mean is, it feels like everything's been decided in advance - that I'm following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn't matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense od who I am. It's as if my identity's an orbit that I've strayed far away from, and that really hurts. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch. Oshima gazes deep into m eyes. "Listen, Kafka. What you are experiencing now is the motif od many Greek tragedies. Man does not chose fate. Fate chooses man. That is the basic world view of Greek drama. And the sense od tragedy - according to Aristotle - somes, ironically enough, not drom the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I am getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex being a Great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of lazines or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.

A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.

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

All she had to do was make the simplest of gestures - open her hands and let go her hold. She lifted one hand and moved the fingers of it; they responded, in surprise and obedience, and this obedience of a thousand little unsuspected muscles was in itself a miracle. Why ask for more?

all the existentialists concur that it is through our choices that we become who we are.

All those times back in my life when I had thought myself unhappy…how foolish I had been. Any man who experiences the worst looks back on all that was as better. So it was with me. “Call only that man happy who is dead.” The ancient Greeks once said that…but oh ye ones lost in the river of time…if only you knew, if only you knew. Man, no matter what his situation, can be happy, if only he realizes that his situation could be worse. But for me, there was no worse situation; I was like Croesus attached to the pyre, only there was no King to release me from being consumed by the flames. But here, right now, as I write this, I am happy, because I am at war. War is the refuge for those who have nothing better to do. The voice of my conscience, like an ancient Emathion head, was lost in the lust, devoured within the burning fire of my heart. I poured some Beefaronis over my foot. The dim light of the flashlight shone upon it. Then I waited. One came, quickly, running across the room. It leaped at my foot but my hand grabbed it before its teeth could clench down on my foot. The razorblade in my other hand came down hard upon its flesh. As I concentrated on murdering this poor rodent, I did not see the other rat scurrying across the room. The pain was deep. It did not just indulge in Beefaronis, but its teeth dug deeper. I screamed. I let the other rat go, throwing it across the room. I did not know if it was dead or not, but I did not care. I tried grabbing the other rat, but it had dug itself in. I kept screaming. I felt as if a pitchfork was repeatedly struck through my body while I hung chained to a wall. In a way, it almost felt good, because it was different from the deadening dullness that was normal.

And just then it crossed my mind that one might fire, or not fire—and it would come to absolutely the same thing.

A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him but you see his incomprehensible dumb-show and you wonder why he is alive.

An atheist is someone who is disappointed in his search of god. He is a man who strongly needed god but couldn't find him. Atheism is a cry of despair

And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!

Always know the shape you take—know it so well you can shift it to your purpose, so well the form gives way to formlessness again. What is a grain but a seed? And from a seed, you can grow anything. Like, say, a family.

Ama bardağımın dibinde biram ılıksa, aynada koyu renkli lekeler varsa, fazlalıksam; en içten ve en katışıksız acım, ayıbalığı gibi, hem bir yığın et hem gepgeniş bir deriyle ve insanın içine dokunan ıslak, ama kötülük dolu gözlerle sürüklenip hantallaşıyorsa bu benim kabahatim mi?

Am I to leave this world as a man who shies away from all conclusions?

And then, whatever you yearn for may indeed become a weakness or an open wound... if you make it the only standard by which you live your life.

And think about the precise meaning of that term: a Narcissus is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes nice care of all his mirrors.

And it's always better, isn't it, when you discover answers on your own?

An erupting existence craves character mutation as salvation for the alter ego.

Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to hate or respect or envy, but only your body--your nostrils and your mouth and the wide, blank canvas of your skin--could tell you who to love.

Anxiety, trauma and crisis are necessary catalysts to stimulate self-consciousness.

apa gunanya bahwa saya terbukti benar? saya berada di sisi kebenaran?--dan dia yang tertawa pertamakali hari ini, juga akan tertawa yang terakhir

apa yang dilakukan demi cinta, selalu terjadi diluar kebaikan dan kejahatan

A person is what he says and does; that's how you learn whether his reputation was earned or manufactured.

apa? kamu mencari? kamu ingin membanyakkan dirimu menjadi sepuluh, seratus kali? kamu mencari pengikut? carilah nol!

As a result of subduing the forces of nature with the tools that we invent, we find ourselves today at the point where the force of our tools has become a greater concern than the forces of nature.

Aren't you going to try to talk me out of this?" Maurice asked. "Ask if I'm really up for it?" "No. Maybe this is the last thing you do. Maybe you make a complete recovery. Does it matter? I mean, in the long run?" "No.

A sense of his own identity came upon him with sudden force, and he felt the power of it. He was himself, and he knew what he had been.

A shaft of sweetness shoots through me from top to toe when the sun rises; I shoulder my gun in silent exaltation.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

As if this great outburst of anger had purged all my ills, killed all my hopes, I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world- and finding it so much like myself, in fact so fraternal, I realized that I’d been happy, and that I was still happy. For the final consummation and for me to feel less lonely, my last wish was that there should be a crowd of spectators at my execution and that they should greet me with cries of hatred.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, yadda yadda yadda.

As joy dwindles with the years I wistfully recall When the christmas tree Looked ten feet tall And the presents under it Seemed endless And more Than mere wrapping paper.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....