Existential Quotes - Page 4

• There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

  Albert Camus

  Struggle, Passion, Existentialism

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.73, Vintage

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• We might say that psychoanalysis revealed to us the complex penalties of denying the truth of man's condition, what we might call the costs of pretending not to be mad.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Mad, Cost

  Ernest Becker (1997). “The Denial of Death”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• Therefore, it is we who are responsible for much of the evil in the world; and we are each morally required to accept rather than project that ponderous responsibility-lest we prefer instead to wallow in a perennial state of powerless, frustrated, furious, victimhood. For what one possesses the power to bring about, one has also the power to limit, Mitigate, counteract, or transmute.

  Stephen A. Diamond

  Responsibility, Evil, Frustrated

  Stephen A. Diamond (1996). “Anger, Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence, Evil, and Creativity”, p.85, SUNY Press

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• Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures.

  Christian Smith

  Real, Creative, Fuel

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• I'm only trying to present as honest a portrayal of the grimness of human ambition as I can. I'd hope it's rather uplifting, actually, since I find the sort of blind optimism and empty laughter of a great deal of "contemporary culture" to be more depressing than something that admits to a potential for disappointment and a gnawing sense of existential mockery.

  Chris Ware

  Uplifting, Depressing, Disappointment

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Polar fleece is a plush, spongy, totally artificial material that weighs nothing and conveys no quality of warmth or coolness; in fact, you can wear it in the most bitter weather or in the hottest heat. Polar fleece looks neither flimsy and light nor hearty and warm. It has no historical, cultural, or physical association with a place, a season, a society, or any living thing. It is the first existential fabric - eminentaly useful, meaningless, dissociated and weird.

  Mary Ruefle

  Weather, Light, Historical

  Mary Ruefle (2012). “Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures”, p.60, Wave Books

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• Be wary of too much calm, particularly in your mid-fifties.

  Ian Mcewan

  Too Much, Calm

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• Know your magic, trust your magic, use your magic and know that you are a manifestation of life's magic.

  Rasheed Ogunlaru

  Magic, Use, Crisis

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• Only something as insane as human beings would ever asked themselves if 'I'm good.' You don't find oak trees having existential crisis. 'I feel so rotten about myself. I don't produce as much acorns as the one next to me.'

  Adyashanti

  Tree, Insane, Rotten

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• In those who rest on their unshakable faith, pharisaism and fanaticism are the unmistakable symptoms of doubt which has been repressed. Doubt is not overcome by repression but by courage. Courage does not deny that there is doubt, but it takes the doubt into itself as an expression of its own finitude and affirms the content of an ultimate concern. Courage does not need the safety of an unquestionable conviction. It includes the risk without which no creative life is possible.

  Paul Tillich

  Expression, Safety, Creative

  Paul Tillich (1958). “Dynamics of faith”

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• But freedom is the possibility of a total and centered act of the personality, an act in which all the drives and influences which constitute the destiny of man are brought into the centered unity of a decision.

  Paul Tillich

  Destiny, Men, Personality

  "Systematic Theology".

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• I call a lie: wanting not to see something one does see, wanting not to see something as one sees it... The most common lie is the lie one tells to oneself; lying to others is relatively the exception.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Doe, Common

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

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• The purpose of psychotherapy is to set people free.

  Rollo May

  People, Purpose, Psychotherapy

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• Despair is suffering without meaning.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Suffering, Despair

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• Believers are increasingly aware that, unless the Good News is made known also in the digital world, it may be absent in the experience of many people for whom this existential space is important.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Space, People, Important

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• To be inspired is the ultimate antidote to existential despair.

  Jason Silva

  Despair, Inspired, Antidote

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• We are called to reach out to those who find themselves in the existential peripheries of our societies and to show particular solidarity with the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters: the poor, the disabled, the unborn and the sick, migrants and refugees, the elderly and the young who lack employment.

  Pope Francis

  Inspiring, Wise, Brother

  Pope Francis' Message to Cardinal Kurt Koch On The Occasion of The 10th General Assembly of The World Council Of Churches, w2.vatican.va. October 4, 2013.

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• In no way can it be uttered, as can other things, which one can learn. Rather, from out of a full, co-existential dwelling with the thing itself - as when a spark, leaping from the fire, flares into light - so it happens, suddenly, in the soul, there to grow, alone with itself.

  Martin Heidegger

  Dwelling, Fire, Light

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• Less and less is life animated through personal discovery, intimacy with others, or self-reflection. While life has become more manageable for many people, it has become commensurately less engaged.

  Kirk J. Schneider

  Reflection, Discovery, Self

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• The financial system in its current condition poses an existential threat to Western democracy far exceeding any terrorist threat.

  John Lanchester

  Democracy, Financial, Currents

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• The greatest cause of evil included all human motives in one giant paradox. Good and bad were so inextricably mixed that we couldn't make them out; bad seemed to lead to good, and good motives led to bad. The paradox is that evil comes from man's urge to heroic victory over evil.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Evil, Victory

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• There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

  William James

  Philosophical, Eye, Reality

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.429, Simon and Schuster

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• The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won. Absurdity challenges every ethics; but also the finished rationalization of the real would leave no room for ethics; it is because man's condition is ambiguous that he seeks, through failure and outrageousness, to save his existence.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Confused, Real, Men

  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.120, Open Road Media

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• Man is not what he believes himself to be in his conscious decisions.

  Paul Tillich

  Believe, Men, Decision

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• The Room is a drama that is also a comedy that is also an existential cry for help that is finally a testament to human endurance.

  Greg Sestero

  Drama, Endurance, Rooms

  Greg Sestero, Tom Bissell (2014). “The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made”, p.15, Simon and Schuster

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