Stoics have nothing against existentialism quotes. While both come from the Western philosophy branch, existentialism focuses on the idea that existence is subjective. Every one of us will have a different experience while living in the world, and thus we will have to choose different paths. Where stoics try to view the world from a more positive and realistic perspective, existentialists take a more pessimistic stance. Existential quotes focus on the anxiety and the idea that you are in charge of your own life, even if it is absurd and dreadful.
Even the most simple existentialism quote tries to highlight the idea that the individual is in control and not the universe. These kinds of ideas gained a lot of popularity after World War 2 ended. The ideas emphasized that we get thrown into this world and can’t say where and when we arrive, but we can choose how we live. Existentialism philosophy highlights that the person has to choose what to do and create meaning in his life. Philosophers like Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and more have expanded this school of thought.
If you are tired of stoic philosophy, then quotes about life through the eyes of an existentialist might be what you are looking for. In the list below, we put the most mind-opening and thought-provoking quotes for you to read up on. Upvote the quotes that you found to be the most interesting. If you have a saying you want to share, do so in the comments below. However, if deep life quotes have you feeling pessimistic, check out some positive ones we have compiled before.
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"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Albert Camus
"If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life." - Charles Bukowski
"We are all born mad. Some remain so." - Samuel Beckett
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." - Carl Sagan
"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." - Søren Kierkegaard
"I hate victims who respect their executioners." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Charles Bukowski
"Do you think that I count days? There is one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
But you won't remember what you shouldn't do in your next life... 😬
"Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order." - Samuel Beckett
"I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100." - Woody Allen
"It is necessary to fall in love...if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway." - Albert Camus
"In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." - Albert Camus
"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts, we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do." - Hermann Hesse
"No one can advise and help you, no one. There is only one way: go within." - Rainer Maria Rilke
"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true, the other is to refuse to believe what is true." - Søren Kierkegaard
"Life begins on the other side of despair." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him." - Søren Kierkegaard
"The point is there ain't no point." - Cormac McCarthy
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love." - Carl Sagan
"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." - Albert Camus
"The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived." - Søren Kierkegaard
"Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"It is only in our decisions, that we are important." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Remember, no matter where you go, there you are." - Confucius
"If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself." - Martin Heidegger
A great philosopher...but very very pragmatic...supported Fascism and survived. Sanchal Bilgrami
"Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses." - Marcus Aurelius
"When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death." - Jean Genet
"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living." - Søren Kierkegaard
"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired." - Franz Kafka
"We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Let us do something, while we have the chance!... Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!" - Samuel Beckett
"There is something infantile in the presumption that somebody else has a responsibility to give your life meaning and point? The truly adult view, by contrast, is that our life is as meaningful, as full, and as wonderful as we choose to make it." - Richard Dawkins
A teacher of mine was saddened when the meaning of life came up in a discussion and 15 year old me said life didn't have a given meaning - I still stand by that. Life is a process to experience, not a puzzle to solve (unless you're speaking scientifically)
"He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom." - Simone De Beauvoir
There is no pure freedom. There are always inhibiting factors stopping you from doing whatever you wish, be it decency, ability, tradition, opportunity, knowledge, or simple physics. I can't kiII everyone who gets on my nerves, I can't do my daily shopping in Walmart/Target (we don't have those here), I can't talk fluid Mandarin/Urdu/Hungarian, I can't waggle my arms to fly,...
"What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that he sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music." - Søren Kierkegaard
"You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that." - Samuel Beckett
"I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself." - Franz Kafka
"It’s only because of their stupidity that they’re able to be so sure of themselves." - Franz Kafka
"Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level." - Ernest Becker
"All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"The existentialist says at once that man is anguish." - Jean-Paul Sartre
This is channeling the Buddha. Life is suffering. Sartre seemed to think that was the end, the Buddha the beginning
"The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is proof that he exists." - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry
"Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back." - Samuel Beckett
"It’s not always easy to distinguish between existentialism and a bad mood." - Matthew Woodring Stover
"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal." - Albert Camus
"I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved." - Søren Kierkegaard
"The tears of the world are a constant quantity. For each one who begins to weep somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh." - Samuel Beckett
"Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity." - Albert Camus
"The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men." - Albert Camus
"The meaning of life is that it stops." - Franz Kafka
