Frank Delaney

First a piece of Irish wisdom: you should always listen to a bookie. For they have a saying, 'Money tells a good story,' and somewhere in their odds is a kind of science-fiction existentialism that decrees that we, the people, know everything. In other words, betting patterns often make for good, unconscious soothsaying.

Irish Novelist

Carolyn Porco

I read about eastern philosophy and religion and existentialism. All that introspective thinking got me thinking about the great beyond. That turned my sights from inwards to outwards, and I started becoming interested in the makeup of the universe, and I started reading about astronomy, planets, and galaxies.

American Scientist

Naomi Wolf

French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning.

American Author

Jerry Hall

When I was 17, I was at La Coupole brasserie, and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir asked me to join them at their table. They were fascinated that I'd watched their programme on existentialism back home and wanted to understand nothingness and being.

American Model

Elvis Mitchell

With his compulsively slamming lyrics and king-of-the-world delivery, DMX intuitively echoes the existentialism of the projects of the novelist Donald Goines.

American Critic

Anita Brookner

Existentialism is about being a saint without God; being your own hero, without all the sanction and support of religion or society.

English Historian

T. J. Miller

I'm a Nietzschean scholar. I've read an immense amount about nihilism and existentialism.

American Actor

Stanley Elkin

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism.

American Novelist

Delmore Schwartz

Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

American Poet

Emphasizes personal human conditions, like feeling alone or free.

Individual Focus

While often linked to anxiety, it also asserts life's possibilities.

Not Just Despair

Used in discussions of philosophy, not everyday conversation.

Academic Term

Writers use it to explore subjects like choice and existence in stories.

Literary Expression

Characters often face the anxiety of making choices in an indifferent world.

Existential Characters

Influenced broader culture, inspiring movies and art on human condition.

Cultural Impact

 under the banner of a new philosophy called existentialism. Existentialists believed people were born as blank slates, each responsible for creating their life’s meaning amidst a chaotic world. But Camus rejected their school of thought. He argued all people were born with a shared human nature

Is life meaningless? And...

 Now I'm an arts graduate; I love myth and magic and existentialism and self-loathing. That's what I do. But I also don't understand how it does ruin the magic. All of the magic, I think, that may well be taken away by science