Existentialist Quotes:

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

topic: Men, Existentialist, Anguish

Myth does not want to be interpreted in cosmological terms but in anthropological terms or, better, in existentialist terms.

- Rudolf Bultmann

source: Rudolf Karl Bultmann, Schubert Miles Ogden (1985). “New Testament and mythology and other basic writings”

topic: Want, Doe, Existentialist

Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.

- Wislawa Szymborska

topic: Serious, Existentialist, Jokes

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.

- Catherine Camus

source: Source: www.spikemagazine.com

topic: Men, Resistance, Existentialist

[Albert Camus] was not an existentialist!

- Catherine Camus

topic: Existentialist

Alexander Trocchi was an existentialist. He was looking at an alienated artist in the post-war period. It's modern because it applies now as well.

- Tilda Swinton

source: Source: www.nerve.com

topic: War, Artist, Existentialist, Post War

I am a confectionery-based existentialist.

- Bill Bailey

topic: Funny, Humor, Existentialist

"To be is to do," says the existentialist. "One only becomes real (human) at the point of action."

- Leo Buscaglia

source: Leo F. Buscaglia (1972). “Love”, Fawcett

topic: Real, Action, Existentialist, Real Human

There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

topic: Christian, Atheist, Thinking, Existentialist

Animals are happier than humans because they're like furry little existentialists, all living in the moment. Their collective motto: live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking pelt.

- Richard Jeni

topic: Animal, Live In The Moment, Littles, Die Young, Live Fast Die Young

I am not a logician. I am an existentialist. I believe in this meaningless, beautiful chaos of existence, and I am ready to go with it wherever it leads.

- Rajneesh

topic: Beautiful, Believe, Chaos, Beautiful Chaos, Existentialist

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

source: Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.13, Open Road Media

topic: Fate, Principles, Action, Existentialist

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

topic: Military, Philosophical, Numbers, Existentialist

[M]an is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

source: Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “The Philosophy of Existentialism: Selected Essays”, p.31, Open Road Media

topic: Believe, Passion, Men, Existentialist

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

topic: Mean, Men, Essence, Indefinable, Existentialist

Look at all the stuff the Existentialists did. You can start with [Pablo] Picasso, you know, and then Francis Bacon and other guys like that. What they were doing is depicting suffering. And that's exactly what a demon is, he's pretending that he isn't. So he can get more people down there. You know, misery loves company, that's the whole thing. So that's basically the pitch that I'm working on.

- Paul Laffoley

topic: People, Guy, Suffering, Existentialist

Existentialist philosophy recognizes the existence of the individual as the real purpose of human life. The recognition is basically atheistic and it encourages the individual to free himself from the impositions of custom, governmental authority, economic pressures, and cultural inhibitions.

- Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

topic: Philosophy, Real, Atheism, Inhibitions, Existentialist

Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters.

- David Simon

topic: Voice, Choices, Matter, Hope Of Success, Existentialist

Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist philosopher who celebrated the anguish of decision as a hallmark of responsibility, has no place in Silicon Valley.

- Evgeny Morozov

topic: Responsibility, Decision, Valleys, Paul Sartre, Silicon Valley

I think it's true that for existentialist thinkers, appreciation of what we are - free, makers of meaning, 'issues' for ourselves, and so on - is at the same time a recognition of how we should try to live.

- David E. Cooper

source: Source: www.3ammagazine.com

topic: Appreciation, Thinking, Issues, Existentialist

For me, the existentialists are important critics of 'absolutist' claims, and Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are, at least in their later writings, also exponents of a doctrine of mystery: Being or the 'well-spring' of everything is, for Heidegger, ineffable, just as what Merleau-Ponty called 'Flesh' is for him.

- David E. Cooper

topic: Spring, Writing, Important, Exponents, Heidegger

I was keen to dispel a familiar misunderstanding: that existentialists somehow relish the alienation of human beings from the world. This may have been Camus's attitude, but it was certainly not that of Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, each of whom tried to show that we can only experience the world in relation to our own projects and purposes. The world is initially one of 'equipment', said Heidegger: it is a world of 'tasks', said Sartre.

- David E. Cooper

topic: Attitude, Tasks, Purpose, Heidegger, Existentialist

I guess I've always written more from the opposite perspective, that kind of existentialist perspective which argues that existence precedes essence. And there really isn't anything essential in there - you're the product of your actions, which can always change. And they retrospectively make you one way or another.

- Zadie Smith

source: Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

topic: Essence, Opposites, Perspective, Existentialist

I think that in the past, in the '50s and '60s, after the existentialists and beatniks and hippie movements, the big deal was, Don't sell out. We live in a society that by virtue of the speed we communicate and sell, everything sells. The danger is buying in; that your concern becomes success, rather than fulfillment. They're two different beasts, and my feeling is that you should seek fulfillment. You should not measure your worth in how much you have or how popular you are, but how happy you are with what you do.

- Guillermo del Toro

topic: Hippie, Past, Thinking, Beatnik, Big Deal

In my formative years the people who influenced me most were the Christian existentialists, I mean men like Munier and Kierkegaard and perhaps most of all Nicholas Berdyaev and in my travels I looked for one thing more than anything. I rarely discussed, probably mainly because of language difficulties, metaphysics with the various religious people of other groups I'd meet with. But I'd very much try to see how they were incarnated, how their particular soul was incarnated or took roots into reality.

- Pierre Trudeau

source: Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

topic: Christian, Religious, Mean, Mean Man, Formative Years

Sometimes I wake up in awe that I'm alive. I can't get over that part, so I guess it makes me kind of like an existentialist.

- Michelle Rodriguez

source: Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

topic: Wake Up, Alive, Kind, Existentialist

Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.

- Albert Ellis

topic: Goal, Soul, Purpose, Spirit And Soul, Santa Clause

A minimal level of sportsman ethics afield is mandated by written law. Beyond that, say, when an action is legal but ethically questionable, or when (as Aldo Leopold long ago pointed out) no one is watching, hunter ethics is an individual responsibility. As the existentialists would have it, we determine our own honor minute by minute, action by action, one decision at a time.

- David Petersen

source: "The North American Model for Wildlife Conservation Is an Endangered Species in Colorado" by David Petersen, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2013.

topic: Responsibility, Law, Long, Individual Responsibility, Existentialist

I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the source of rivers towards their source or plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment.

- Jean-Paul Sartre

topic: Men, Sea, Cities, Existentialist

Man never ceases to seek knowledge about the objects of his experiences, to understand their meaning for his existence and to react to them according to his understanding. Finally, out of the sum total of the meanings that he has deduced from his contacts with numerous single objects of his environment there grows a unified view of the world into which he finds himself "thrown" (to use an existentialist term again) and this view is of the third order.

- Paul Watzlawick

topic: Men, Views, Order, Existentialist

I grew up watching a lot of Italian and French movies, so I want to have that '70s look, in my dream movie. I want that thing that's not so much happening now, that's existentialist.

- Ayelet Zurer

source: Source: collider.com

topic: Dream, Italian, Looks, French Movies, Existentialist

Give me lust, baby. Flash. Give me malice. Flash. Give me detached existentialist ennui. Flash. Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism. Flash.

- Chuck Palahniuk

topic: Baby, Giving, Lust, Invisible Monsters, Intellectualism

I rather shared Nietzsche's conception of the kind of individual that an ideal education should be cultivating. 'Authenticity' is not Nietzsche's term, but as used by some existentialists, it nicely captures what Nietzsche admired - the resolve of an individual person to forge his or her own 'table of values', to be emancipated from strait-jacketing conventions, traditions, and ideologies. As embodied in the 'Overman', authenticity is the antidote to 'bad' nihilism.

- David E. Cooper

source: Source: www.3ammagazine.com

topic: Nihilism, Tables, Kind, Cultivating, Existentialist