Quotes About Existentialism

All neurotics, and many others besides, take exception to the fact that 'inter urinas et faeces nascimur.

Ko postavlja pitanje o smislu zivota,s njegovim libidom nije nesto u redu.

Sigmund Freud

Graffiti on Philosophy Hall: The examined life ain't worth it either.

Quien no haya concebido jamás su propia anulación, quien no haya presentido el recurso a la cuerda, a la bala, al veneno o al mar, es un recluso envilecido o un gusano reptante sobre la carroña cósmica.

Cioran escribe que «sólo se suicidan los optimistas, los optimistas que ya no logran serlo. Los demás, no teniendo ninguna razón para vivir, ¿por qué la tendrían para morir?»

our brains—if we, that is, for our brains are the permanent essence of us—no longer have need of knowledge, and if we have no need because the computers do it all for us, then what is human intelligence good for? An existential intellectual crisis looms: If machines will acquire all our knowledge for us and do our thinking for us, then what, pray, is the need for us to be?

Tragedies are all right for a while: you are concerned, you are curious, you feel good. And then it gets repetitive, it doesn't advance, it grows dreadfully boring: it is so very boring, even for me.

I was very fond of Lagneau's phrase: "I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.

But I must admit I didn´t like that idea; do the same thing as everyone else. Eating to live, living to eat - that had been the nightmare of my adolescence. If it meant going back to that, if would be just as well to turn on the gas at once. But I suppose everyone thinks of things like that: let´s turn on the gas at once. And you don´t turn it on.

Insects were scurrying about in the shade cast by the grass, and the lawn was a huge monotonous forest of thousands of little green blades, all equal, all alike, hiding the world from each other. Anguished, she thought, I don't want to be just another blade of grass.

It was easier for me to think of a world without a creator than of a creator burdened with all the contradictions in the world.

Mais le pire, quand on habite une prison sans barreaux, c'est qu'on n'a pas même conscience des écrans qui bouchent l'horizon; j'errais à travers un épais brouillard, et je le croyais transparent. Les choses qui m'échappaient, je n'en entrevoyais même pas la présence.

La fatalité triomphe dès que l'on croit en elle.

I could easily understand why Lambert was bored with this peace which gave us back our lives without giving us back our reasons for living.

Me preguntaba como se logra vivir todavia cuando no se espera nada más de sí

The fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.

Sartre'la kar??laÅŸt???m zaman, her ÅŸeyi kazand???ma inanm??t?m. Onun yan?nda benim kendimi gerçekleÅŸtirmem baÅŸar?s?zl??a uÄŸrayamazd?. Åžimdi kendi kendime ÅŸunu söylüyorum: KurtuluÅŸu bir baÅŸkas?nda görmek, y?k?lman?n en güvenli yoludur

I know nothing, nothing. I not only have no answer to give, but I haven't even found a satisfactory way of propounding the questions.

My life was hurrying, racing tragically toward its end. And yet at the same time it was dripping so slowly, so very slowly now, hour by hour, minute by minute.

Já se passaram três anos? [...] A rapidez com que os anos se passaram era angustiante. Quantas vezes ainda teria três anos para viver?

Si la mujer es prosaica, casera, bajamente utilitaria, se debe a que le imponen que consagre su existencia a preparar alimentos y limpiar deyecciones. No será de ahí de donde podrá extraer el sentido de la grandeza.

oppression is explained by the tendency of the existent to flee from himself by alienating himself in the other that he oppresses for that purpose; this tendency can be found in each individual man today: and the vast majority give in to it; a husband looks for himself in his wife, a lover in his mistress, in the guise of a stone statue; he seeks in her the myth of his virility, his sovereignty, his unmediated reality.

Existentialism alone gives - like religions - a real role to evil, and it is this, perhaps, which make its judgments so gloomy. Men do not like to feel themselves in danger. Yet, it is because there are real dangers, real failures and real earthly damnation that words like victory, wisdom, or joy have meaning. Nothing is decided in advance, and it is because man has something to lose and because he can lose that he can also win.