Existential Understanding Quotes & Sayings

Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. ( ... ) I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world. — Albert Camus

At MIT, I had the good fortune for seven years to teach network theory, which is basic to many disciplines, to one-third of the undergraduate student body. It was an experiment to see how high we could bring their level of understanding, and it exceeded all of my expectations. — Amar Bose

I felt there needed to be a show for teenagers that didn't make them feel judged. 'Skins' never tried to preach. It allowed young people to make their own decisions about what to do and whether it was right or wrong. Young people really respond to that, and that's what sets 'Skins' apart. — Kaya Scodelario

I'm actually with the classics in general in terms of understanding truth in an existential mode. Therefore, philosophy becomes more a way of life as opposed to simply a mode of discourse. — Cornel West

The friend in need is the one who is the friend in deed; ... if people were not friends in need, there was every likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that might obtain. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I know from my own experience that suicide is not what it seems. Too easy to try to piece together the fragmented life. The spirit torn in bits so that the body follows. — Jeanette Winterson

Folly is strong;
wisdom is stronger.
Evil is mighty;
righteousness is mightier. — Matshona Dhliwayo

There are many theological trappings of monotheistic religions that insist that we will never completely experience or know God as the most high of existential truth which insists that the closest we can hope to comprehend of Him is only through an emphatic rapturous recognition that transcends the mere human mind. Yet, this concept of understanding is a chronic symptom of an internal, subjective limitation of consciousness concluded and shared by the forefathers of our faiths which have, unwittingly, prejudiced and influenced our churches, synagogues' and mosques and should be questioned vigorously less we continue down the path of ineffective tribalism and spiritual division. — Jason Versey

Try as I do to comprehend the human project and my part in it, I am further than ever from understanding the monstrous everyday things that seem like self-evident truths and existential necessities to so many. — Michael Leunig

In order to live a meaningful life,
humans need answers, i.e., a certain understanding of basic existential questions. These 'answers' do not have to be made completely explicit, as a lack of words does not necessarily indicate a lack of understanding, but one has to able to place oneself in the world and build a relatively stable identity. The founding of such an identity is only possible if one can tell a relatively coherent story about who one has been and who one intends to be. — Lars Fr. H. Svendsen

Whatever pretext we may give for our affections, often it is only interest and vanity which cause them. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Whatever the Left touches
the arts; the economy; health care; the soul; religion
it destroys or damages — Dennis Prager

What were you doing in there?" she asked, unwilling to let it go.
... "Jacking off, naturally." She narrowed her eyes but seemed to be happy with that answer. Good to know. She was going to make a fabulous wife. — Karina Halle

We have some good ideas here. But the only way to know if they're workable is to try to make them fail. If we fail to fail, then maybe we're on the right track. — Orson Scott Card

Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers
people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin. — Otto Penzler

I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my Life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say. — Ingrid Bergman

I can't imagine a life without humor. Especially if you have an existential understanding of life, you must acknowledge the absurdity of it all. — David Cronenberg

My understanding of life is very existential. I think that we are our bodies. There's nothing else, and when we die, that's it. No afterlife. — David Cronenberg

We are always in a constant state of conspiracies,
at least thats what they keep telling us ... — Faith Brashear

I've done both theatre and film and the fact is if you start believing, if you start reading things and they're good reviews - you believe that and you're lost, and then you read bad reviews and you think that's true and you read that and you're lost. — Jenny Agutter

To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth-intellect ually and emotionally-and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us. — Chris Hedges

That shouldn't have happened," she says, throwing back her shoulders in a stance as stiff as a statue's.
"What? The kiss or you likin' it so much? — Simone Elkeles

... there is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn and know not what we yearn for. There is a black hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing. — Jesse Browner

Existential psychotherapy is the movement which, although standing on one side on the scientific analysis owed chiefly to the genius of Freud , also brings back into the picture the understanding of man on the deeper and broader level man as the being who is human. It is based on the assumption that it is possible to have a science of man which does not fragmentize man and destroy his humanity at the same moment as it studies him. It unites science and ontology . — Rollo May

The teenagers aren't all bad. I love 'em if nobody else does. There ain't nothing wrong with young people. Jus' quit lyin' to 'em. — Moms Mabley

He was drop-dead gorgeous and I, well I was just ... dead. (Tera Hightower, Dead Chick Walking) — Ace Antonio Hall