#existentialism

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

#human-nature #humanism #identity #personalism #personhood

It is interesting to note how many of the great scientific discoveries begin as myths. ↗

— Rollo May

#myth #science #science

The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears monstrous, it is true. For I want to compel all dogs thus to assemble together, I want the bones to crack open under the pressure of their collective preparedness, and then I want to dismiss them to the ordinary life they love, while all by myself, quite alone, I lap up the marrow. That sounds monstrous, almost as if I wanted to feed on the marrow, not merely of bone, but of the whole canine race itself. But it is only a metaphor. The marrow that I am discussing here is no food; on the contrary, it is a poison. ↗

— Franz Kafka

#philosophy #faith

I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#humor #life #pondering #humor

There is scarcely any passion without struggle. ↗

— Albert Camus

#passion #struggle #passion

I just look around and say, I'm a mess, I don't know why I do things ↗

— Mike Tyson

#funny #funny

I rebel; therefore I exist. ↗

— Albert Camus

#rebel #existentialism

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#wisdom #writing #existentialism

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself. ↗

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

#existentialism #meaning #existentialism

Man cannot endure his own littleness unless he can translate it into meaningfulness on the largest possible level. ↗

— Ernest Becker

#existentialism