Existentialism Quotes

Existentialism Quote of the day

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.

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

He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.

The point is there ain't no point.

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

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

Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.

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

Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.

It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

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

How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.

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.

It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.

I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.

The Theatre of the Absurd is a theatrical embodiment and manifestation of existentialism. It is part reality and part nightmare

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.

From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity.

The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.

The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.

Words are loaded pistols.

I wonder if being sane means disregarding the chaos that is life, pretending only an infinitesimal segment of it is reality.

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.

Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?

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

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.

Death is a continuation of my life without me.

Nothingness haunts Being.

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

This is awful. I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself.

Without awareness, we are not truly alive.

Existentialism isn't so atheistic that it wears itself out showing that God doesn't exist. Rather, it declares that even if God did exist, that would change nothing.

I think living in our culture right now, there's a universal experience where we feel like we become what we do. Sometimes that's rewarding and sometimes that creates an existential crisis.

All of the things I used to obsess over, I'm no longer as obsessed with. I have new concerns but they're a little more existential or cosmic.

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.

Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.