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Quotes by Existentialist Philosophers

Quotes by Existentialist Philosophers

There are places where the mind dies so that a truth which is its very denial may be born.(Albert Camus)

Crushing truths perish by being acknowledged.(Albert Camus)

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. (Albert Camus)

Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only. (André Malraux)

There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.(Antonin Artaud)

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.(Antonin Artaud)

For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.(Antonin Artaud)

You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief? . . . We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone.(Antonin Artaud)

Destroy yourselves, you who are desperate, and you who are tortured in body and soul, abandon all hope. There is no more solace for you in this world. The world lives off your rotting flesh. (Antonin Artaud)

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart. (Blaise Pascal)

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world. (Blaise Pascal)

I have no other pictures of the world apart from those which express evanescence, and callousness, vanity and anger, emptiness, or hideous useless hate. Everything has merely confirmed what I had seen and understood in my childhood: futile and sordid fits of rage, cries suddenly blanketed by the silence, shadows swallowed up for ever by the night.(Eugène Ionesco)

The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. . . . I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water. (Eugène Ionesco)

For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart. (Eugène Ionesco)

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. (Franz Kafka)

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins. (Franz Kafka)

My fear . . . is my substance, and probably the best part of me. (Franz Kafka)

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid. (Franz Kafka)

What fails to kill me makes me only stronger. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

Perhaps all music, even the newest, is not so much something discovered as something that re-emerges from where it lay buried in the memory, inaudible as a melody cut in a disc of flesh. A composer lets me hear a song that has always been shut up silent within me. (Jean Genet)

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. (Jean Paul Sartre)

Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt. (Jose Ortega y Gasset)

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. . . . Man is the more man-that is, the more divine-the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish. (Miguel de Unamuno)

Neurosis is a way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being. (Paul Tillich)

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death. (Robert David Laing)

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)

Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.(Soren Kierkegaard)

What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.(Soren Kierkegaard)

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant. . . . My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known-no wonder, then, that I return the love.(Soren Kierkegaard)

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.(Václav Havel)

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it. (Václav Havel)

We needed to stop asking ourselves about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly. . . . Therefore, it was necessary for us to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. (Viktor Frankl)

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations -- one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it -- you will regret both. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 2, "Balance between Esthetic and Ethical" (1843)

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility! Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, vol. 1, "Diapsalmata" (1843)

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life. Jean Paul Sartre Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, book 2, "The Melodious Child Dead in Me..." (1952)

Things are divorced from their names. I am in the midst of things, nameless things. Alone, without words, defenseless, they surround me, are beneath me, behind me, above me. Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea, p. 125 (1964 translation)

The roots of the chestnut tree were sunk in the ground just under my bench -- I couldn't remember if it was a root anymore. The words had vanished and with them the significance of things, their methods of use, and the feeble points of reference which men have traced on their surface.... Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of "existence." Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea, p. 126 - 127

The word "absurdity" is coming to life under my pen; a little while ago in the garden, I couldn't find it, but neither was I looking for it, I didn't need it: I thought without words, on things, with things.... In fact, all that I could grasp beyond that returns to this fundamental absurdity. Absurdity: another word. I struggle against words; down there I touched the thing. Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea, p.129

I am responsible for everything... except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant. Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, "Being and Doing: Freedom," sct. 3 (1943)

...the innocent and the guilty, both executed without distinction in the end.... Franz Kafka Diary, entry from September 30, 1915.

All these so-called [mental] illnesses, however sad they may look, are facts of belief, the distressed human being's anchorages in some maternal ground; thus it is not surprising that psychoanalysis finds the primal ground of all religions to be precisely the same thing as what causes the individual's "illnesses." Franz Kafka

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest -- whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories -- comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, "Absurdity and Suicide" (1942)

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus, Last words of The Myth of Sisyphus(1942)

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is. Albert Camus, The Rebel, Introduction (1951)

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. . Albert Camus, The Rebel, part 2, "The Rejection of Salvation" (1951)

Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are. Albert Camus, The Rebel, part 3, "Rebellion and Revolution" (1951)

We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, at last, make others take us seriously. Albert Camus, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, in The Fall (1956)

On suicide: Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to your skepticism. Albert Camus, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, in The Fall (1956; p. 56)

The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all -- he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly. Albert Camus, The Rebel, part 5, "Nihilistic Murder" (1951)

I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers. Albert Camus, The narrator (Jean-Baptiste Clamence), in The Fall (1956; p. 7)

We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others. Albert Camus, The Rebel, part 5, "Moderation and Excess" (1951)

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935, 1942 (1962), entry for May 1937

To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile? Albert Camus, American Journals (1978), entry for 1 Aug. 1949.

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future -- and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1942, 1951 (1964), Jan. 1943 entry.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all. Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935, 1942 (1962), entry for 22 Nov. 1937.

The real is the rational and the rational is the real. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Be a person and respect others as persons. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The individual is not a real person unless related to other persons. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. Milton-- Paradise Lost, Book 1, line 254. Satan speaking of his new domain.

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us...We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us." Franz Kafka

"The tremendous world I have inside my head. But how free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me." Franz Kafka

"When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of space of which I am ignorant, and which knows me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there, why now rather than then." -Blaise Pascal

I stick my finger into existence---It smells of nothing. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? Who is it who has lured me into the thing, and now leaves me here? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? --Søren Kierkegaard

Who am I?
Where do I come from?
I am Antonin Artaud
and I say this
as I know how to say this
immediatly
you will see my present body
burst into fragments
and remake itself
under ten thousand notorious aspects
a new body
where you will
never
forget me.

Another Translation

Who am I?
Where do I come from?
I am Antonin Artaud
and if I say it
as I know how to say it
immediately
you will see my present body
fly into pieces
and under ten thousand
notorious aspects
a new body
will be assembled
in which you will never again
be able
to forget me.

(Post-Scriptum)


Friedrich Nietzsche more quotes by Friedrich Nietzsche

What fails to kill me makes me only stronger.

Distrust everyone in whom the impulse to punish is powerful! (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part 2, ch. 29 (1883))

All in all, punishment hardens and renders people more insensible; it concentrates; it increases the feeling of estrangement; it strengthens the power of resistance. (The Genealogy of Morals, essay 2, aph. 14 (1887))

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell. (The Genealogy of Morals, Essay 3, aph. 10 (1887) )

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage. (The Will to Power, book 2, note 362 (1888))

Individuation is the source and primal cause of all suffering. (Birth of Tragedy, 10)

What is good, you ask. To be brave is good. (Ibid, X)

To accept a belief simply because it is customary implies that one is dishonest, cowardly and lazy. (Ibid, 322)

Many superior men who have felt urged to throw off the yoke of some morality or other have had no resource but to feign madness, or actually become insane. (Dawn of Day, 14)

Who is bad? He who always wants to put others to shame. What is most humane? To spare others shame. (Ibid, 273-4)

When the aim of each of us is centred in another, then no one has an object in existing. (We Philologists, 12)

The more you let yourself go, the less others let you go. (Ibid, 83)

So long as you are praised, believe that you are not on your own course but on someone else's. (Ibid, 340)

We are like shop-windows where we are constantly arranging, concealing or setting out in front those qualities which others attribute to us - in order to deceive ourselves. (Ibid, 385)

We begin by unlearning to love others and end by finding nothing loveable in ourselves. (Ibid, 401)

Either one does not dream at all or one dreams in an interesting manner. One must learn to be awake in the same way - either not at all or in an interesting manner. (Ibid, 232)

The secret of realizing the largest productivity and the greatest enjoyment of existence is to live dangerously! Build you cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. (Ibid, 283)

All instincts which do not find a vent outside of oneself turn inwards. (Ibid)

The weakness of modern personality comes out in the measureless overflow of criticism. (Uses and Abuses of History, V)

Deviating natures are of the utmost importance wherever there is to be progress. (Ibid, 224)

All suppressed truths become poisonous. (Ibid, XXXIV)

One must know how to be a sponge is one would be loved by overflowing hearts. Thus Spake Zarathustra, XVIO)

Man is his innermost soul is merely evil. Woman, however, is mean. (Ibid, XLVII)

The dying man has probably lost in life things which were more important than he is now about to lose by death. (Ibid, 349)

To live is ever to be in danger. (Schopenhauer, III)

Most thinkers write badly because they communicate not only their thoughts but also the thinking of them. (Ibid, 188)

To hear everyday what is said about us, or even to endeavour to discover what people think, will in the end destroy even the strongest man. (Ibid, 522)

Profound suffering ennobles. It separates. (Ibid, 270)

One must have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star. (Ibid)

I praise leaders and forerunners: that is to say, those who leave themselves behind and do not care in the least whether anyone is following them or not. (Ibid, 554)

The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. (Ibid, 574)

A defect in character may become the school of genius. (Ibid, 452)

The highest men act out their lives without keeping back any residue of inner experience. (Ibid, 228

Those who have been deeply wounded have the Olympian laughter. (Ibid, 1040)

A man pays dearly for being immortal; to this end, he must die many times over during his life. (Ibid, on Thus Spake Zarathustra, 5)

I know my fate. One day there will be associated with my name the recollection of something frightful -- of a crisis like no other before on earth, of the profoundest collision of conscience, of a decision evoked against everything that until then had been believed in, demanded, sanctified. I am not a man I am dynamite. (Ecce Homo, "Why I Am a Destiny" (1888))

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