I was drawn to astronomy by a teenage existential quest. Around 13, I was deep into wondering about the meaning of life and what I was doing here. I turned to religion, but that did nothing for me. I got to wondering where was here. So, I began studying astronomy and became enthralled by what I learned.

Carolyn Porco

I never had an existential moment when I asked myself what I was going to do. I always wanted to be a lawyer, and I knew exactly the kind of lawyer I wanted to be.

Alan Dershowitz

Mom Men Ways

When the Negro musician or dancer swings the blues, he is fulfilling the same fundamental existential requirement that determines the mission of the poet, the priest and the medicine man.

Albert Murray

Music Men Wings

'Ikiru' is existential but with a lot of tenderness.

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Wit Tent Tenderness

You might get run over; you might get hit by lightning. I mean, who knows? Each day, there is a chance you might die. And there's nothing wrong with that. Every living being on Earth is facing that same existential rift.

Alex Honnold

Chance Art You

When I see a room full of people pedaling away on stationary bikes, I fall into an existential spiral. It's confirmation that all we do as humans is pedal, pedal, pedal, and go nowhere. We're just specks of dust in the universe, riding 1970s stationary bicycles.

Ali Liebegott

Where Way Verse

People in third-world countries are less eager to see movies full of angst over existential problems, and who can blame them. They've got other fish to fry. They'd rather see a few great dance routines and the guy end up with the girl.

Alison Owen

Movies Great Age

I think our families or parents were trying to do best by us by telling us, 'Do what you love.' On an existential level, they might have done their best by us, but I think, in terms of the reality principle, maybe less so.

Alissa Quart

Love You Yin

Being gay, you're kind of forced to ask, I suppose, very existential questions from a very, very early age. Your identity becomes so important to you because you're trying to understand it, and, I think, from the age of, like, 9, you're being forced to ask questions... that other kids maybe don't have to ask.

Andrew Haigh

Age Your You

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

Anita Brookner

Society Religion God

Bananas are great, as I believe them to be the only known cure for existential dread. Also, Mother Teresa said that in India, a woman dying in the street will share her banana with anyone who needs it, whereas in America, people amass and hoard as many bananas as they can to sell for an exorbitant profit. So half of them go bad, anyway.

Anne Lamott

Great Yin Woman

I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.

Anne Lamott

Love Will Us

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

Antonio Tabucchi

Teacher Life View

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

Archie Shepp

Music Visa Us

Political operatives don't tend to be existentialists. They do know, however, that if a supporter doesn't vote, then his or her opinion does not make a sound - or a difference.

Ari Melber

Vote Up UN

We knew of Sartre and we dressed like the French existentialists. Our philosophy then, and remember we were only little kids, was more in following their looks than their thoughts. We were going around looking moody.

Astrid Kirchherr

Art Wing Win

There's a real existential anxiety at having to exist not just in a generalised social framework, but a capitalist social framework.

Autre Ne Veut

Work Us Tent

Around the world, climate change is an existential threat - but if we harness the opportunities inherent in addressing climate change, we can reap enormous economic benefits.

Ban Ki-moon

Change World Us

There was an existential moment - I don't know if I want to call it crisis - when I turned 50 and I felt 'this is interesting; how did this happen?' It affected me in a way I wasn't expecting. It made me pause for reflection.

Bill Bailey

Mom Men Way

The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone.

Bill Moyers

Men Experience Age

Most people are living lives of sort of survival. And constantly posing an existential crisis, either through fantasy or oblivion, really has been pretty much explored in rock and roll. At least in the western version of rock n' roll.

Billy Corgan

Western West Version

Once a week, I like to slip into a deep existential depression where I lose all my sense of oneness and self-worth.

Bo Burnham

So when you're dealing with an existential threat like death or like climate change, if you see it as 'we are all toast anyway,' then denial is a pretty good way of coping.

Bob Inglis

That existential crisis is something you rarely see portrayed by black characters; the idea that people think about their own existence and that they have hopes and dreams is taken away from people of color in their representation.

Boots Riley

Huge public spending and borrowing in the face of an existential crisis is clearly the right thing to do, as is putting people's health and wellbeing above the pursuit of economic growth.

Caroline Lucas

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.

Carolyn Porco

I was drawn to astronomy by a teenage existential quest. Around 13, I was deep into wondering about the meaning of life and what I was doing here. I turned to religion, but that did nothing for me. I got to wondering where was here. So, I began studying astronomy and became enthralled by what I learned.

Carolyn Porco

I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

Carrie Brownstein

There's nothing ever monetarily or fame-seeking or any of the other motivations that sometimes go hand-in-hand with this profession. To me, it's just not like that. I'm on a journey of self-discovery and trying to avoid total existential crisis. That's the kind of operating zone that I'm approaching this business from.

Charlie Hunnam

There's this existential argument that comes in, at some point, when you're over-thinking the songwriting process. There's no guarantee that the more time you spend or the more you concentrate on certain aspects that that's going to produce a better result, especially in the arts.

Chris Cornell

I dropped out of high school when I was 16, after I had a huge argument with my English teacher over the meaning of the word 'existentialism.'

Craig Ferguson

I don't find biology as interesting as politics and humanism. I talk more about existential stuff.

Dana Carvey

I think it's always interesting to make sensational stories where, if these people don't make the right choice, it actually puts marks not just on their souls but also their bodies. That means that you can visualize existential questions.

Daniel Espinosa

For me, empathy is an existential question - it's about the survival of the human race. That is, it's imperative for us to overcome the challenges we face.

Daniel Lubetzky

For every Book of Job, there's a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes?

David Benioff

Time and time again, our species has escaped existential threats by reinventing ourselves, finding new skills not coded in our genes to survive new challenges not previously encountered.

David Grinspoon

The story of our species is one of overcoming existential risk through new forms of cooperation and innovation.

David Grinspoon

Plays are always about intense relationships, whether they're intense love relationships or family relationships or existential relationships.

David Ives

'Atomic Blonde' is about the characters' bigger existential crisis and their world. It's not so much the conceit of the spy game; it's more that being a spy sucks. But we're going to make it fun to watch.

David Leitch

With the transcendent or supernatural, they help us contextualize our own lives while we are here on this earth. On a narrative level, as a storyteller, they are a wonderful tool and technique by which to explore those hopes, those fears, those existential dilemmas that we all face from time to time.

David Lowery

The essential gesture of the contemporary novel is to get people to turn the page, to entertain them, and I hate that. I want a novel where the gesture is towards existential investigation on every page. That, to me, is thrilling.

David Shields

Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters.

David Simon

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

Delmore Schwartz

I'm really interested in how people face existential crises and either overcome them or don't, and in how the human psyche responds.

Doug Stanton

I think that every human - and this is something, you know, like, your years from 14 to, like, 23 are kind of, like, super, super existential, and you're figuring out life.

Dove Cameron

There is nowhere I encounter greater understanding for Israel's existential issues than in the Oval Office.

Ehud Olmert

Admitting hundreds of thousands of infiltrators is an existential threat to the State of Israel.

Eli Yishai

We have an existential crisis, which is the climate crisis. Canada is one of the laggards in the industrialized world. Our record is terrible.

Elizabeth May

Convention serves a purpose: It gives life meaning, and without it, one is in a constant existential crisis. If you don't have the imposition of family to remind you of what is at stake, something else will.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

I don't know any 21-year-old who's not having an existential crisis.

Ella Purnell

I guess I worry about weird existential things, like how do we spend our final act. This is a very emotional question. I can't answer it without crying. I think, You're 56 years old, what did you do? You raised two good kids. What am I going to do now that is as meaningful as that? I don't know the answer yet.

Ellen Barkin