Existentialist Quotes

• 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

  Christian, Atheist, Thinking

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• 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

  Animal, Live In The Moment, Littles

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

  Leo Buscaglia

  Real, Action, Humans

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

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• 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

  Beautiful, Believe, Chaos

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• The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Men, Anguish

  Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.12, Open Road Media

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

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Fate, Principles, Action

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

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

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Military, Philosophical, Numbers

  "On the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg," Libération, June 22, 1953.

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• [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

  Believe, Passion, Men

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

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• 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

  Mean, Men, Essence

  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.164, Open Road Media

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• 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

  People, Guy, Suffering

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

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

  Rudolf Bultmann

  Doe, Want, Term

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

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• 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

  Philosophy, Real, Atheism

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• 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

  Voice, Choices, Matter

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• 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

  Responsibility, Decision, Valleys

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• 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

  Appreciation, Thinking, Issues

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Spring, Writing, Important

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Attitude, Tasks, Purpose

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• 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

  Essence, Opposites, Perspective

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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

  Men, Resistance, Combat

  Source: www.spikemagazine.com

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• [Albert Camus] was not an existentialist!

  Catherine Camus

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• 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

  War, Artist, Modern

  Source: www.nerve.com

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• 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

  Hippie, Past, Thinking

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• 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

  Christian, Religious, Mean

  Source: presbyterianrecord.ca

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• 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

  Wake Up, Alive, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• 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

  Goal, Soul, Purpose

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