85+ Best Existentialism Quotes To Philosophize About
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It is vital to have an approach that emphasizes the existence of the individual self as a free and responsible agent and outlook that determines the development through the mere act of the will.
“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” as quoted by Charles Bukowski, purpose and will are essential aspects of a person’s existence; otherwise, it is tedious to watch paint dry.
Existentialism empowers a different and a singular sense of self-appreciation and gives a weight to our imagination and how we may decide to live, which is highly liberating. Hence, you must undertake efforts to master the concepts of existentialism. Master existentialism through these Albert Camus quotes, Samuel Beckett quotes, and more about the ethics of ambiguity.
If you like these existentialism quotes, then you must check out these Jean-Paul Sartre quotes and Simone De Beauvoir quotes.
Best Existential Philosophy Quotes
All these things considered, sometimes people do need something to guide them. After all, misery and confusion love company. So here we have listed the best existentialism quotes for you to mull over.
1. “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
2. “There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”
- Albert Camus.
3. “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.
4. “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.
5. “We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
6. “I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.”
- Woody Allen.
7. “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
8. “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.
9. “The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.”
- Friedrich Durrenmatt.
10. “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
11. “There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point? The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full and as wonderful as we choose to make it.”
- Richard Dawkins.
12. “He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come.
He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
13. “Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.”
- Ernest Becker.
14.
“A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied.
And it is not true that the recognition of the freedom of others limits my own freedom: to be free is not to have the power to do anything you like; it is to be able to surpass the given toward an open future; the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation and is even the condition of my own freedom.
I am oppressed if I am thrown into prison, but not if I am kept from throwing my neighbor into prison.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
15. “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.”
- Carl Sagan.
Famous Existential Quotes
Existentialism is a philosophical ideology that liberates us from the shackles of defined foundations and traditions established by society. Read on for some the best existentialism quotes as well as incredible Sartre existentialism quotes.
16. “The rightful claim to dissent is an existential right of the individual.”
- Friedrich Durrenmatt.
17. “Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
- Confucius.
18. “All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
19. “Struggle is what it means to be alive and free.”
- David Budbill.
20. “Remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses.”
- Marcus Aurelius.
21. “Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
22. “Do you think that i count days? There is one one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
23. “Hell is other people.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
24. “When the rich wage war, it is the poor that die.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
25. “A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
26. “Commitment is an act, not a word.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
27. “We do not judge the people we love.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
28. “Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
29. “It is only in our decisions, that we are important.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
30. “Words are loaded pistols.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
Motivating Quotes On Existentialism
“Existence precedes and commands Essence”, quoted by Jean-Paul Sartre, is what forms the founding stone of existentialism. Read on for more the motivating existentialism quotes followed by the most prominent Jean Paul Sartre quotes on existentialism.
31. “Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
32. “Society cares for the individual only so far as he is profitable.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
33. “I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
34. “Art is an attempt to integrate evil.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
35. “Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
36. “Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
37. “To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
38. “When an individual is kept in a situation of inferiority, the fact is that he does become inferior.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
39. “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
40. “In the face of an obstacle which is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
41. "Existence precedes and rules essence."
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
42. “I hate victims who respect their executioners.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
43. “Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
44. “The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
45. “Life begins on the other side of despair.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
46. “The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
47. “Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
48. “Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
49. “I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
50. “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
Existentialist Philosophers quotes
It is the ideology that emphasizes humans’ existence and their reality, the only driving force to define themselves and their general surroundings. Read on for some of the best Martin Heidegger existentialism quotes as well as the best self-awareness existentialism quotes.
51. “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.
52. “Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death.”
- Simone De Beauvoir.
53. “No one can advise and help you, no one. There is only one way: go within.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke.
54. “From the very beginning, existentialism defined itself as a philosophy of ambiguity.”
- Simon De Beauvoir.
55. “Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.”
- Joan Didion.
56. “I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche.
57. “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.”
- Jean Genet.
58. “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
- Albert Camus.
59. “The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.”
- Anton Chekhov.
60. “It is necessary to fall in love...if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.”
- Albert Camus.
Inspiring Existentialism Quotes
Often you come across a lot of questions that grind you mentally. Be it contemplating the insignificance of different things around you, your place in this constantly changing and past phased universe that sometimes leaves you feeling alienated, or the feeling of being caught up inside the deeper recesses of your mind.
Read on for some of the best existentialism quotes to guide you.
61. “One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.”
- Rollo May.
62. “In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage.
Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.”
- Paul Tillich.
63. “If the concept of God has any validity or any use, it can only be to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God cannot do this, then it is time we got rid of Him.”
- James Baldwin.
64. “If you only care about how to live and pay no attention how to live, you may fall into one of two polarized models of life.
The first seeks the temporary peace of avoidance: ‘better a live dog than a dead lion.’ The second lives for a sort of impoverished extravagance, thing pleasure at every opportunity, nothing but “hakuna matata.’ The former can see no meaning; the latter mistakes pleasure for meaning.”
- Xuefu Wang.
65. “Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility-lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious, victimhood.
For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, mitigate, counteract, or transmute.”
- Stephen A. Diamond.
66. “The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists.”
- Antoine De Saint-Exupéry.
67. “The literal meaning of life is whatever you’re doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
- Albert Camus.
68. “Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.”
- Nietzsche.
Fascinating Existentialism Quotes
The progressing fame of existentialism theory (especially among youngsters) can be perceived by its basic theme that provides an opportunity of freedom of choices and independence within a present-day setting of no absolute truth. Check out some of the most interesting existentialism quotes.
69. “There’s no way to stop a heartbreak. How do you do that? You cry.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
70. “[Death] Opens your heart. It breaks your heart open. Our hearts have been closed because we’ve closed them. We’ve defended ourselves against pain.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
71. “The time of death is uncertain, but death is certain.”
- Trudy, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
72. “I felt terror that if I stopped drinking I would never write again, because I needed that misery. I needed that edge.”
- Annie, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
73. “I may leave this plane of existence sooner rather than later, But the love isn’t going anywhere.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
74. “When we set an intention, somehow the world seems to magically come to meet us.”
- Trudy, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
75. “Put the past aside and the future aside and get sense into [your] bodies.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
76. “Even The hurt transforms because if you inquire into the hurt you know what you’re experiencing is love.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
77. “And the amazing thing about letting go into it is that you find that this thing called love is supportive, that it holds us.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
78. “I do think that we suffer more if we resist the flow of the river.”
- Clancy’s Mother, ‘The Midnight Gospel.’
Best Existentialism Quotes
Existentialism is one of the most fascinating theories in the present times. Read on for some of the best existentialism quotes.
79. “If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good any more.”
- J. D. Salinger, ‘The Catcher In The Rye,1951.’
80. “Still, obviously, one can’t be sensible all the time.”
- Albert Camus.
81. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
- Samuel Beckett.
82. “No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra.’
83. “A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.”
- Philip K. Dick.
84. “Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.”
- Hermann Hesse, ‘Gertrude.’
85. “It’s not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood.”
- Matthew Woodring Stover, ‘Blade Of Tyshalle.’
86. “The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.”
- Woody Allen.
87. “I know of only one duty, and that is to love.”
- Albert Camus.
88. “There is no reality except in action.”
- Jean-Paul Sartre.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for existentialism quotes, then why not take a look at Heidegger quotes, or intellectual quotes.
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Bachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Administration specializing in Marketing
Supriya JainBachelor of Commerce, Master of Business Administration specializing in Marketing
As a skilled member of the Kidadl team, Shruti brings extensive experience and expertise in professional content writing. With a Bachelor's degree in Commerce from Punjab University and an MBA in Business Administration from IMT Nagpur, Shruti has worked in diverse roles such as sales intern, content writer, executive trainee, and business development consultant. Her exceptional writing skills cover a wide range of areas, including SOP, SEO, B2B/B2C, and academic content.
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