#existential

At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism). ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#conformity

This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving -- and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever or die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure. This is what it is to be human: to persist. ↗

— Spider Robinson

#soider-robinson #existentialism

I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100. ↗

— Woody Allen

#humor #uncertainty #humor

Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#existentialism #feminism #philosophy #freedom

Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#literary-fiction #sensual #love

We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible. ↗

— Albert Camus

#existentialism #probably-bullshit #love

wop-bop-a-lu-bop... a-lop-bam-boom! ↗

— R.W. Penniman

#existentialism #inspirational #little-richard #inspirational

Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.' In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to 'fly upwards ↗

— Andrei Tarkovsky

#existentialism #inspirational #suffering #inspirational

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#existentialism #philosophers #men

Today, however, we are having a hard time living because we are so bent on outwitting death. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#existentialism #death