#existentialism
Explore Books, Authors and Common Highlights on Existentialism
Showing 100 of 137 highlights
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
From The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
We are more concerned about our reputation with the dead than our reputation with the living.
What would happen to the Earth if humans suddenly disappeared?
From The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
In the end, we are all just stories.
There is no reality except the one contained within us.
We are thrown into the world and must make sense of it.
From Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
We are not the sum of our experiences; we are the experiences themselves.
Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.
From The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Choice is the essence of what it means to be human.
Rebellion is the way of the human being.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
From The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche
AI has the potential to reshape our understanding of what it means to be human.
The universe is a dark forest.
From The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect.
From The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Ambiguity is the fundamental quality of human existence.
I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even understand it myself.
From The Trial by Franz Kafka
The search for God is ultimately a search for meaning.
From A History of God by Karen Armstrong
We must choose ourselves; once we have chosen we are responsible for ourselves.
The act of rebellion is the declaration of the individual.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
Time is not a line, but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.
Fear of death is the greatest obstacle to living fully.
The ambiguity of our situation is what makes us human.
The modern world requires us to construct our own meaning.
From Religion for Atheists by Alain de Botton
Ambiguity is the foundation of human existence.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
It’s a hard thing to go through life knowing that you’re going to die and not knowing how.
From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
In the pursuit of the divine, we find ourselves.
From A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape not just our economies but our societies and our very understanding of what it means to be human.
We are the architects of our own extinction.
Time is different in the sacred realm.
There is no such thing as a guilty man.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
The universe is a stage, and we are merely players.
From The Future of Humanity by Michio Kaku
I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then.
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.
From The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
A man does not create himself; he is created by his choices.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.
From Cosmos by Carl Sagan
I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
From The Stranger by Albert Camus
To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
We are all free, and we are all responsible.
The essence of life is to search for meaning.
From Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
Everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything without it.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
I have not only a past, but a future, and I can see it as well as I can see the present.
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming—that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger, it would be easy to live.
From The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
We are condemned to be free.
Freedom is the source of all meaning.
One must choose oneself; one must create oneself.
The greatest problem of our time is the search for meaning.
To will oneself free is to will oneself as a subject that transcends itself.
He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.
The other is the condition of my freedom.
To act is to create a value.
I felt like I was disappearing.
From The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.
From Cosmos by Carl Sagan
Machines have an infinite capacity for boredom.
We must choose ourselves, as we are the ones responsible for our own existence.
The search for God is the search for meaning.
From God: A Human History by Reza Aslan
We are not the authors of our own destinies; we are merely players in a larger game.
From The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.
Being-in-the-world is a fundamental characteristic of Dasein.
From Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
To be human is to be in search of meaning.
From The World's Religions by Huston Smith
The past is always present, and the future is still to come.
All life is problem solving.
We are all doomed. We are all doomed.
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To will oneself free is to will oneself a task.
We can no longer think of ourselves as separate from the world.
From The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
There are no simple answers to the great questions of life.
In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.
The ambiguous nature of man reveals itself in the fact that he is both the subject and the object of his own action.
If God does not exist, everything is permitted.
The search for meaning is an endless journey.
The sacred is the source of all meaning.
The only way to deal with the absurd is to embrace it.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
From The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
From The Gay Science by Friedrich Nietzsche
True faith requires the courage to live without certainty.
To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe.
From Dune by Frank Herbert
Without music, life would be a mistake.
The search for meaning in the universe is the essence of human experience.
From The Cosmic Code by Heinz R. Pagels
Suffering is an inherent part of life.
From Why Buddhism Is True by Robert Wright
There is no such thing as a purely rational act.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
Mystery is more important than certainty.
The search for meaning is the essence of being human.
From God: A Human History by Reza Aslan
To will oneself free is to negate the other.
To be happy, we must not be too happy.
From The Rebel by Albert Camus
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Apathy towards religion can lead to a loss of meaning.
From The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong
The unexamined life is not worth living.
From The Republic of Plato by Allan Bloom
Ambiguity is the very essence of the human condition.
The silence of the world without us would be deafening.
From The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
I have no idea what I want to do with my life.
From Open by Andre Agassi
We must choose ourselves.
We are all just trying to make our way in the world.