Top 100 Existentialism Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Man is condemned to be free.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Choices Quotes, Freedom Quotes

2. “Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Action Quotes, Philosophy Quotes, Being Yourself Quotes, Purpose Quotes

3. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Philosophy Quotes, Freedom Quotes

4. “It is up to you to give life a meaning.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Philosophical Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes

5. “Man’s existence precedes his essence.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

6. “Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

7. “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes, Responsibility Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

8. “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

Also featured in: Happiness Quotes, Meaning Quotes, Reflection Quotes, Philosophical Quotes

9. “We are our choices.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Choices Quotes, Quality Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Powerful Quotes

10. “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Challenges Quotes, Quotes About Trying, Struggle Quotes

11. “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Happy Quotes, Philosophical Quotes, Struggle Quotes

12. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

— Albert Camus

13. “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Pain Quotes, Sadness Quotes

14. “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes

15. “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Live Life Quotes, Fulfillment Quotes, Purpose Quotes

16. “It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Meaningful Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Suffering Quotes

17. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Meaningful Quotes, Fulfillment Quotes, Mental Health Quotes

18. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Sad Quotes, Philosophy Quotes

19. “If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Loneliness Quotes

20. “The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Philosophy Quotes

21. “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Meaning Quotes

22. “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Identity Quotes, Sad Quotes, Individuality Quotes

23. “Man’s search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Psychology Quotes, Human Nature Quotes, Fulfillment Quotes, Mental Health Quotes

24. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Risk-Taking Quotes

25. “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Fulfillment Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Purpose Quotes

26. “Life begins on the other side of despair.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

27. “Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and our inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Conscience Quotes

28. “The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.”

— Albert Camus

29. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Sad Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Adversity Quotes

30. “The crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Truth Quotes

31. “What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Human Nature Quotes, Identity Quotes, Humanism Quotes

32. “Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?”

— Soren Kierkegaard

Also featured in: Identity Quotes

33. “Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Sad Quotes

34. “Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Meaning Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Purpose Quotes

35. “And never have I felt so deeply at one and the same time so detached from myself and so present in the world.”

— Albert Camus

36. “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Darkness Quotes

37. “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Fulfillment Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Purpose Quotes

38. “Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Human Nature Quotes

39. “You can take away my wife, you can take away my children, you can strip me of my clothes and my freedom, but there is one thing no person can ever take away from me – and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to what happens to me!”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Human Nature Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Survival Quotes

40. “I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

41. “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

42. “The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live – moreover, the only one.”

— Emil Cioran

Also featured in: Quotes About Facts

43. “Life is a useless passion.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Disappointment Quotes

44. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Adversity Quotes

45. “It is only in our decisions that we are important.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Quotes for Better Decisions

46. “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”

— Albert Camus

47. “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

48. “God is dead, God remains dead, and we have killed him.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Also featured in: Science Quotes, Philosophy Quotes

49. “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

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Struggle Quotes

50. “Commitment is an act, not a word.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Also featured in: Commitment Quotes