Existential Quotes To Have You Questioning Everything

Hello, everyone. Another great existential day on this planet that's nothing more than a blue and green rock that's hurtling through space and time at an alarming pace; not knowing if today is the day where that one lucky asteroid gets in the way and lights everything we know and love up like a matchstick being struck on the side of its cardboard box.

I hope you're all having a good day - even before I just said that. Today, I thought it would be fun to not 'discuss' existentialism really, but to look at some of my favorite quotes that bring on that uneasy feeling in me. And, hopefully, you.

I'll try not to make comments after each quote because I don't want to stifle your thoughts. I want you to make up in your own head what's being discussed. So, just sit back, relax (you're going to want to be as relaxed as possible), and try not to think too deeply about these quotes. Unless you're feeling brave enough, of course.

"You go talk to kindergartners or first-grade kids, you find a class full of science enthusiasts. They ask deep questions. They ask, "What is a dream, why do we have toes, why is the moon round, what is the birthday of the world, why is grass green?"  

These are profound, important questions. They just bubble right out of them.  

You go talk to 12th graders and there's none of that. They've become incurious. Something terrible has happened between kindergarten and 12th grade. 

— Carl Sagan, Cosmos: Carl Sagan 

"I looked at everyone and wondered where they came from, and who they missed, and what they were sorry for."

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

 

"What if humans weren’t supposed to happen. What if everything can kill us because the Earth is trying to kill us?... What if we were never supposed to exist at all and the world is just trying to correct its biggest mistake?"

— dogglefoxkvk, via Tumblr

 

"I just keep losing. I mean, some people just supposed to lose? For balance in the universe? I mean, like, are there just some people on Earth who supposed to be here just to make it easier for the winners?"

— Earn Marks, Atlanta

 

"Why do we crave love so much, even to the point that we would die for it?"

— Helen Fisher, The brain in love

 

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want."

And why do I want?

— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath

 

"ain’t we all just trying to be

some type of sanctuary for someone?

for every year we are not destroyed

do they not remind us what a miracle

it is to have lasted this long?"

— Clint Smith, what the cathedral said to the black boy

 

"I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on earth. Then I ask myself the same question."

— Harun Yahya, Author of "The Evolution Deceit"

 

"Ah, who will save me from existing? It’s neither death nor life that I want."

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

 

"do you ever realize how terrifying the concept of the soul is?

i'm trapped inside a dying body on a dying planet in a dying universe with no way out but death.

i feel really claustrophobic right now."

— exacerbatedtumor, via Tumblr 

What's your thought on some of these quotes? Some of these can get really heavy in a way that I bet you've never thought of. That's the best thing about existential questions. Sometimes they show up in the most minute and unique way that no one has ever thought to question before. When you think about an existential crisis, it gives you a sense of enlightened loneliness in the world. I wonder if that's how God feels? Enlightened to the complexities of life, but - in knowing those complexities - horribly alone to the rest of us. Maybe it was these very lonely thoughts that drove God to create the universe. Makes sense then that we're all made in God's image, and that we get lonely too.

Maybe that's the reason humanity is so quick to look to the stars for a god. He created us to find him and meet him in heaven so that he wouldn't be so lonely anymore. Maybe that's why he takes the good ones. Think about it...

See you all tomorrow.

Also, please go and check out my new e-book, Susie's First Roast, which is now available on Amazon. It's a great psychological short story. I hope you enjoy it.

Buh-bye.