Quotes About Existentialism

Ma io persisto a credere che la ragione migliore per suicidarsi è la paura della morte.

Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

I have an existential crisis every time I walk into a bookshop, knowing that I'm not going to read all the books before I die.

I brought my first fall/winter line to New York, and it was confiscated by U.S. Customs. They asked, 'What is the value of this?' I said, 'I'm not so good with existential questions.'

You're painfully alive in a drugged and dying culture.

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here.

Against all this mechanized barbarism, existentialist psychology and humanist psychology — aided, perhaps not coincidentally, by the metaphors of quantum physics — suggests that other models of human existence are possible and thinkable and desirable.

This existentialist-humanist psychology thus comes around to the same conclusion as the majority of quantum physicists: whatever we are talking about, our mind has been its principle architect. Nothing is real and everything is real as Gribbin says. That is, in this model, nothing is absolutely real in the philosophical sense, and everything is experienced reality to those who believe in it and select it in their perception-gambles.

In fact, the emphasis on choice and creativity in existentialist-humanist psychology has an exact parallel in the two-hole experiment. Many physicists think the best metaphor to describe that experiment is to say that we create the wave or particle depending on which experimental set-up we choose.

Rewriting in English Prime we find John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office and John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach. We have left the realm of spooks and re-entered the existential or phenomenological world of actual experiences in space-time. And, lo and behold, another metaphysical contradiction has disappeared in the process.

As we said at the beginning, the bedrock claim of existentialism holds that existence precedes essence, or we have no essence. Like electrons, we jump from one information system to another, and only those who have not looked closely believe that one essence remains constant through all transformations.

If by some miracle I have managed to make sense out of this issue, where physicists themselves seem to have trouble understanding one another, the basic point of Copenhagenism seems to be similar to my own Nietzschean-existentialist view that the nonverbal or preverbal world never contained meters or kilograms or ergs of energy or photons or good or evil or beauty or meaning until primate nervous systems (human minds) put them there as systems of classification.

Existentialism dates back to Soren Kierkegaard, and, in his case, represented (1) a rejection of the abstract terms beloved by most Western philosophers, (2) a preference for defining words and concepts in relation to concrete individuals and their concrete choices in real-life situations, and (3) a new and tricky way of defending Christianity against the onslaughts of rationalists.

Phenomenological sociology owes a great deal to Husserl and Huizinga, and to Existentialism. Denying abstract or Platonic reality (singular) the social scientists of this school recognize only social realities (plural) defined by human interactions and game-rules, and limited by the computational abilities of the human nervous system.

Pragmatism has a family resemblance to existentialism and phenomenology and arose out of the same social manifold. This philosophy, or method, derives chiefly from William James — a man so complex that his books land in the philosophy section of some bookstores and libraries, the psychology section elsewhere, and sometimes even appear in the religion section. Like existentialism, pragmatism rejects spooky abstractions and most of the vocabulary of traditional philosophy.

If Nietzsche's existential relativism be accepted, then there will always be true things that do not fit any existing reality-tunnel, just as in mathematics Godel demonstrated that there will always be true theorems not deducible from any set of axioms. (See Chapter Two.)

Sartre claimed that hell is other people," I said. "He never saw no TV game show," Hawk said.

Maybe if I didn't think about Mimi Warren or Traci Louise Fishman or Eddie Tang they would all disappear and living would be easy. Elvis Cole, Existential Detective. I liked that. Not thinking, properly done, creates a pleasant numbed sensation in the brain that I like a lot. There are women who will tell you that not thinking is one of my best things.

Not even a suicide these days does away with himself in desperation but deliberates on this step so long and so sensibly that he is strangled by calculation, making it a moot point whether or not he can really be called a suicide, inasmuch as it was in fact the deliberating that took his life. A premeditated suicide he was not, but rather a suicide by means of premeditation.

when the ambitious man whose slogan is 'Either Caesar or nothing' does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself.

I know." She sighed. "We'll all say that. We'll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it's all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we'll be here, and we'll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces.

I don't think there is any point in continuing writing. Since I have neither killed nor been killed, there's nothing further to explain. (Box Man, p. 38)