William Barrett Quotes

• Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.

  William Barrett

  Unemployment, Hunger, Jobless

  76 Copy quote

• It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our nose is what we see last.

  William Barrett

  Inspirational, Life, Elude Us

  21 Copy quote

• Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread.

  William Barrett

  Anxiety, Feelings, Uncanny

  15 Copy quote

• Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everythingand that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.

  William Barrett

  Men, Hands, Greek

  7 Copy quote

• We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures.

  William Barrett

  May, Able, Humans

  William Barrett (1978). “The illusion of technique: a search for meaning in a technological civilization”, Anchor Books

  6 Copy quote

• To discover one's own spiritual poverty is to achieve a positive conquest by the spirit.

  William Barrett

  Spiritual, Poverty, Achieve

  William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.46, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

• The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.

  William Barrett

  Civilization, Philosopher

  William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.20, Anchor

  8 Copy quote

• Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.

  William Barrett

  Europe, Civilization, America

  William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.14, Anchor

  7 Copy quote

• We exist within the question of God.

  William Barrett

  6 Copy quote

• The bond that attaches us to the life outside ourselves is the same bond that holds us to our own life.

  William Barrett

  5 Copy quote

• From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background.

  William Barrett

  Philosophy, Spring, Character

  William Barrett (1978). “The illusion of technique: a search for meaning in a technological civilization”, Anchor Books

  6 Copy quote

• Much like tobacco companies want to keep smokers dependent on their deadly product, the oil industry wants to keep California dependent on oil – an expensive, dirty and limited resource that damages health.

  William Barrett

  Dirty, Oil, California

  4 Copy quote

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