Existential Quotes - Page 11

• The most important thing... was to change their spirit; and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I decided to promote literary movement.

  Lu Xun

  Mean, Important, Movement

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• But anyone who thinks themselves genuinely unbiased is bound to be taken in.

  Lu Xun

  Taken, Thinking, Unbiased

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• Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus.

  Joe Meno

  Real, Book, Writing

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• Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Encounters, Engagement, World

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.55, John Wiley & Sons

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• Of course, the surest way to free yourself from an existential crisis is through comedy.

  Jennifer Beals

  Way, Free Yourself, Comedy

  "Jennifer Beals on life after death, loving Campbell Scott, and The L Word". Interview with Will Harris, tv.avclub.com. August 4, 2015.

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• Man's natural and inevitable urge to deny mortality and achieve a heroic self-image are the root causes of human evil.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Self, Roots

  Ernest Becker (1985). “Escape from Evil”, Free Press

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• In the beginning, we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology.

  Sam Keen

  Technology, Thinking, Enemy

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• The citizens of a city are not guilty of the crimes committed in their city; but they are guilty as participants in the destiny of [humanity] as a whole and in the destiny of their city in particular; for their acts in which freedom was united with destiny have contributed to the destiny in which they participate. They are guilty, not of committing the crimes of which their group is accused, but of contributing to the destiny in which these crimes happened.

  Paul Tillich

  Destiny, Cities, Humanity

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• The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

  Blaise Pascal

  Math, Men, Doe

  c.1654-1662 Pense es, no.139 (translated byA Krailsheimer).

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• Only a few years ago did it suddenly dawn on me that my existential fear regarding my nation’s future and my moral outrage regarding my nation’s occupation policy are not unconnected. On the one hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is occupying another people. On the other hand, Israel is the only nation in the West that is existentially threatened. Both occupation and intimidation make the Israeli condition unique. Intimidation and occupation have become the two pillars of our condition.

  Ari Shavit

  Unique, Hands, Years

  Ari Shavit (2013). “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”, p.10, Spiegel & Grau

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• Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers--people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.

  Otto Penzler

  Art, Book, People

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• Hezbollah, Hamas, Al-Qaeda, they all have ties to Iranian money. I think they are the biggest exist - existential threat... Russia could be up there, but I think it would probably be to one of our NATO allies rather than the homeland.

  Eric Bolling

  Thinking, Russia, Ties

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this theres certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

  J. C. Chandor

  Avant Garde, Elements, Taste

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• It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

  Iain Banks

  Civilization, Might, Emptiness

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• Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Humanity, Psychotherapy, Contention

  Viktor E. Frankl (2000). “Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning”, Basic Books

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• A paradox arises: the only way to meaning in freedom is through boundaries. The only way that boundaries make any sense at all is through freedom.

  Clark Moustakas

  Way, Boundaries, Paradox

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• A historical perspective can also help free us from the ever-present danger -- especially at danger in the social sciences -- of absolutizing a theory or method which is actually relative to the fact that we live at a given moment in time in the development of our particular culture.

  Rollo May

  Perspective, Historical, Facts

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• Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.

  Rollo May

  Age, Normal, Transition

  Rollo May (1969). “Love and will”

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• One must not let oneself be misled: they say 'Judge not!' but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Judging, Way, Hell

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1996). “The Vision of Nietzsche”, Element Books Limited

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• All who have read a few old books have picked up the old tactics of considering every new idea a 'heresy' which must be rooted out.

  Lu Xun

  Book, Ideas, Tactics

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• We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.

  Charles Bukowski

  Life, Odds, Laughing

  "The Meaning of Life: The Big Picture". Life Magazine, December 1988.

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• Denial is a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by focusing on stresses we can handle—like getting to work on time or paying our taxes.

  Dan Brown

  Morning, Block, Stress

  Dan Brown (2014). “Inferno: Special Illustrated Edition (Enhanced): Featuring Robert Langdon”, p.377, Knopf

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• It is a cliche, and it is also true, that humor springs from existential pain - from a need to blunt the awareness that life is essentially a fatal disease of unpredictable symptoms and unknown duration.

  Gene Weingarten

  Pain, Spring, Needs

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• Startups live at the intersection of existential crisis and everything going perfectly great.

  Aaron Levie

  Crisis, Existential Crisis, Intersections

  Twitter post from May 05, 2014

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• But almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or sub oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors

  Paulo Freire

  Struggle, Men, Contradiction

  Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.45, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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