Meaning

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and has been given in sufficient measure for us to achieve the greatest things, if we were to spend it all well.”

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

“Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty; and from the moment that he is thrown into this world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“Existence precedes essence.”

“Technics is the pursuit of life by means other than life.”

“The meaning of a word is its use in the language.”

“— Без бога-то и без будущей жизни? Ведь это, стало быть, теперь всё позволено, всё можно делать?”

“"Страдание — вот единственная причина сознания." / "Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness."”

“The "essence" of Dasein lies in its existence.”

“Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.”

“What does nihilism mean? That the highest values devaluate themselves. The aim is lacking; "why?" finds no answer.”

“The problem of meaning, then, in its most rudimentary form is, How does a being who needs meaning find meaning in a universe that appears to have no meaning?”

“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”

“The concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept that although every human being wishes to attain it, he can still never say determinately and in a manner consistent with himself what he really wishes and wills.”

“Differance is not neither a word nor a concept.”

“The self is a relation that relates itself to itself, or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself.”

“I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”

“Desire does not lack anything; it does not lack its object. It is, rather, the subject that is missing in desire, the subject that desires.”

“Man is not ultimately concerned with pleasure or power but with meaning: the will to meaning is the primary motivational force in human life.”

“Self-actualization cannot be attained if it is made an end in itself, but only as a side effect of self-transcendence: the meaning is found by looking beyond the self, and the self is fulfilled by the looking.”

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

“Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal, yet in such a way, be it noted, that the movement is repeated, that is, that the single individual, after having been in the universal, now as the single individual isolates himself as higher than the universal.”

“My conclusion is that personal identity is not what matters. What matters is Relation R: psychological connectedness and/or continuity, with the right cause.”

“In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy.”

“The worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself — his inner world — becomes, the less belongs to him as his own.”

“Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide.”

“The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select.”

“That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its own nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“Language is the house of being.”

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

“The world is my representation.”

“One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.”

“God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? The holiest and mightiest thing the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives — who will wipe this blood off us?”

“The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence.”

“Death is a way to be, which Dasein takes over as soon as it is.”

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

“Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies; and the advantage of the universe over him, the universe knows nothing of.”

“Marry, and you will regret it; do not marry, and you will also regret it; whether you marry or do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world's follies, and you will regret it; weep over them, and you will also regret it; whether you laugh at the world's follies or weep over them, you will regret both.”

“Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.”

“I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome. What have you done to overcome him?”