Quotes About Existentialism

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one

This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.

How had I not seen that there was nothing more important than an execution, and that when you come right down to it, it was the only thing a man could truly be interested in?

Of course, [Albert Camus] wasn't an existentialist, but he was a committed man. He was a man of combat. It wasn't for nothing that he directed the Resistance journal called Combat.

But I didn't know what to say to him. What do you say to a man that by his own admission has no soul? Why would you say anything?

And can a man his own quietus make with a bare bodkin?

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling and halting

Perhaps man will rise ever higher as soon as he ceases to flow out into a god.

This question is posed to mayself, am I a man who thinks he's an angel? Or an angel who thinks he's a man?

No one knows whether death may not be the greatest good that can happen to man.

It is no longer possible to escape men. Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.

Man's existence precedes his essence

We do not wish to say only that a man is responsible for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for that of all men.

I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?

I have always been amazed at my contemporaries' lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.

Ah, what a morning this is, awakening me to life's stupidity. [98 - Zenith trans.]

Estragon: I can't go on like this. Vladimir: That's what you think.

Our world has become dehumanized. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature.

Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

Why is there such a gap between nonspeaking animals and speaking man, when there is no other such gap in nature?

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death