Existential Quotes - Page 13

• All gradients of reality, all existential distinctions, have finally been annihilated.

  Margaret Wertheim

  Art, Reality, Distinction

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• Every war, every revolution, demands the sacrifice of a generation, of a collectivity, by those who undertake it.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  War, Sacrifice, Generations

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.106, Open Road Media

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• The existential attitude is one of involvement in contrast to a merely theoretical or detached attitude. "Existential" in this sense can be defined as participating in a situation, especially a cognitive situation, with the whole of one's existence.

  Paul Tillich

  Attitude, Existentialism, Existence

  Paul Tillich (1988). “Writings on religion”

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• Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.

  Rollo May

  People, Evil, Tears

  Rollo May (1985). “My Quest for Beauty”, W W Norton & Company Incorporated

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• Once I gave up the hunt for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices.... Needless to say, this is far less satisfying that nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.

  Barbara Brown Taylor

  Healing, Responsibility, Choices

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• Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Levels, Existentialism

  Ernest Becker (1985). “The Denial of Death”, New York : Free Press

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• In those days it was possible for a Greek to flee from an over-abundant reality as though it were but the tricky scheming off the imagination-and to flee, not like Plato into the land of eternal ideas, into the workshop off the world-creator, feasting one's eyes on the unblemished unbreakable archetypes, but into the rigor mortis off the coldest emptiest concept off all, the concept of being.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Plato, Eye, Reality

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• There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood.

  Rollo May

  Stronger, Culture, Definitions

  Rollo May (1991). “The Cry for Myth”, p.23, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own

  Rollo May

  Choices, Fundamentals, Existentialism

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.45, Jason Aronson

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• One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.

  Rollo May

  Able, Existentialism, Readiness

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.38, Jason Aronson

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• Symbols are specific acts or figures, while myths develop and elaborate these symbols into a story which contains characters and several episodes. The myth is thus more inclusive. But both symbol and myth have the same function psychologically; they are man's way of expressing the quintessence of his experience - his way of seeing his life, his self-image and his relations to the world of his fellow men and of nature - in a total figure which at the same moment carries the vital meaning of this experience.

  Rollo May

  Character, Men, Self

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• What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself.

  Ernest Becker

  Lying, Mean, Reality

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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• The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair.

  Connie Willis

  Revenge, Pride, Wrath

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• These artists all have some kind of message to the public. These messages can be quite personal, maybe about their own existential situation, and it can be about suffering, it can be about questioning of one's existence and so on. They are all telling us very genuine stories, which are touching us in different ways and they are enlightening in different ways. But it's not only the stories themselves, but it's how it is done - that creates the impact of the story. It is not what is said but how it is said. I don't think you can dissociate the content from the form.

  Gunnar Kvaran

  Thinking, Artist, Touching

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I always think of baseball as so existential. Like, you're just out there in a field, in a big expanse of green grass.

  Kim Gordon

  Baseball, Thinking, Like You

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• What I'm trying to do is paint a picture of an atypical human being going through all of the existential struggles, but all the while realizing the carnality and small things, because I like minutiae a lot. All the while knowing that it's a forest - knowing that none of it means anything. I think if more people understood that, they would just go ahead and kill themselves like they're gonna do anyway, but do it quickly as opposed to hanging out and using up resources. Don't just sit around criticizing other people and wasting time. I do that, but I'm not really skilled in any other way.

  Willis Earl Beal

  Struggle, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• If you want to live a long life, focus on making contributions .

  Hans Selye

  Long, Focus, Want

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• As far as the lyrics go, I think I was negotiating a moment in my life where I didn't feel happy. I think I had some existential frustration and I was wrestling with that on a few different levels. I was feeling like I wanted to change a lot of things.

  Rostam Batmanglij

  Wrestling, Frustration, Thinking

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.

  Robert M. Gates

  Thinking, Israel, Nuclear

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• Jesus clearly believed in the reality of Satan and other principalities and powers. Now, I have very compelling historical, philosophical, and existential reasons for concluding that Jesus is Lord, and if I confess him to be Lord, I don't see how I can consider myself in a position to ever correct his theology, especially about such a foundational theological matter!

  Gregory A. Boyd

  Jesus, Philosophical, Reality

  Source: www.patheos.com

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• The internet takes a lot of the anxiety of life away. It's a kind of deity. You're never lonely. You're always distracted. If you spend enough time on it, there's not really that nagging sensation of existential despair; it erases it very effectively. And it's monolithic. And thanks to it, we've got the ways to linger there after death - your blog exists afterwards, your e-mail exists afterwards.

  Joshua Ferris

  Lonely, Anxiety, Despair

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• A poverty learned with the humble, the poor, the sick and all those who are on the existential outskirts of life. A theoretical poverty is no use to us. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ, in the humble, in the poor, in the sick and in children.

  Pope Francis

  Children, Humble, Sick

  Pope Francis' address to The Participants in The Plenary Assembly of The International Union of Superiors General, w2.vatican.va. May 8, 2013.

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• When we are dealing with human beings, no truth has reality by itself; it is always dependent upon the reality of the immediate relationship.

  Rollo May

  Reality, Existentialism, Humans

  Rollo May (1994). “Existence”, p.27, Jason Aronson

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• Sometimes my poetry is an attempt to keep off existential terror; sometimes it is a grappling with philosophical problems; sometimes just fun.

  Gwen Harwood

  Fun, Philosophical, Poetry

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• The earthly meaning of eternal life was death, and she refused to die.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Eternal Life, Eternal, Dies

  Simone De Beauvoir (2013). “A Very Easy Death”, p.47, Pantheon

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