#existentialism

When reason has followed its road to the end, the point of crisis is reached and man is brought to the great question mark over his own existence. ↗

— Rudolf Karl Bultmann

#existentialism #faith #reason #faith

Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#life #philosophy #wisdom #life

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

#existentialism #follow-your-bliss #self-actualization #self-determination #life

One thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#psychology #true-to-life #life

Alan had never been stabbed or shot or punctured or broken. Were scars the best evidence of living? If we have not survived something, and thus were certain that we'd lived, we could scar ourselves, couldn't we? ↗

— Dave Eggers

#life

[Y]ou are here to learn something. Don’t try to figure out what it is. This can be frustrating and unproductive. ↗

— Steven L. Peck

#existentialism #frustration #hell #life #wisdom

CLOV: Do you believe in the life to come? HAMM: Mine was always that. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#life

But now the world breaks in on us, the world is shocked, the world looks upon our idyll as madness. The world maintains that no rational man or woman would have chosen this way of life - therefore, it is madness. Alone I confront them and tell them that nothing could be saner or truer! What do people really know about life? We fall in line, follow the pattern established by our mentors. Everything is based on assumptions; even time, space, motion, matter are nothing but supposition. The world has no new knowledge to impart; it merely accepts what is there. ↗

— Knut Hamsun

#life

Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#feminism #philosophy #love

On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #goodness #ignorance #the-plague #love