Existential Questioning Quotes

The ancient man approached God (or even the gods)as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge: if God should have a reasonable defense for being the god who permits war, poverty, and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the bench and God is in the dock.

I'm still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim us which will we claim how will we go on living how will we touch, what will we know what will we say to each other.

Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.

I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder.

When I approached God at that time, I hardly had a living faith in Him. The agnostic was in me, the atheist was in me, the sceptic was in me and I was not absolutely sure that there was a God at all. I did not feel His presence. Yet something drew me to the truth of the Vedas, the truth of the Gita, the truth of the Hindu religion.

I believe there's a God but I'm not too sure of his relevance.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?

There's the part of me that's the organizer, part of me that's the artist, part of me that's the person who, even with those two things, wants to figure out what my place in the world is. How to engage with it and whether my life has any meaning.

I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous. And therefore I bid farewell to all this; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?

Other kids would be playing with their Action Man, and I was questioning life and society.

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

For she was a child, throwing bread to the ducks, between her parents who stood by the lake, holding her life in her arms which, as she neared them, grew larger and larger in her arms, until it became a whole life, a complete life, which she put down by them and said, "This is what I have made of it! This!" And what had she made of it? What, indeed?

I went through a phase after we won the World Cup of 'what am I going to do with my life.'

I would go to heaven, if I believed in heaven.

At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven. If so, I was going to reply, You know what? You're right. Fine.

For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it (life), whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to 'glorify God and enjoy him forever.'

Reality: What a concept!

I was always taught to be grateful, and so the question came early: What is there to be grateful for? Why is life supposed to be so good? That's still a question I try to answer all the time.

I don't know if I have a career or not, or where it ends or it begins. I have been working, doing what I do for a long time. But my creative process has always been so tortuous.

Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.

When I was little, the great mystery to me was not how babies were made, but why?

To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence, hollering, 'What's it for?'

'What is celebration?' Rather than dancing, rather than laughing, rather than loving, rather than enjoying this silence, the mind asks: 'What is celebration?'