Existential Doubt Quotes

I don't see any god up here.

Either you're a person wondering if you have a soul, or you're a soul who knows that being a person isn't real.

I kind of feel, in a way, all of us will forever be asking those questions of ourselves: Who am I and how do I fit in in the world and what is all this about? Because those aren't really... there are no answers to those questions, in a sense.

There's a moment for everybody when you look at that picture of Jesus in the church and think, 'This doesn't totally make sense.' If God made everything, then who made God? We have no idea.

We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell.

I barely belong to this world, but still I'm participating.

It's very hard to live in an environment where you're reminded, constantly told that your existence just happens to be here... That you are not meant to be here.

Ever since the days of Adam, man has been hiding from God and saying, 'God is hard to find.

We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.

You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you're lost now.

I've always found life quite difficult to explain to people or to myself.

I'm pretty critical, but I'm also pretty good at letting go once it's done. 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. Some of the most brilliant things that someone might do could happen in three minutes because it's something that just occurs to them.

I've always felt like an alien trapped in a human form. We all do at some time or other; for me it's a permanent state, and I'm still unsure if Earth is a penance or a reward.

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am.

When I look at myself, I see a person who strangely lacks what I consider the ingredients of a personality.

One should be an enigma not just to others but to oneself too. I study myself. When I'm tired of that I light a cigar to pass the time, and think: God only knows what the good Lord really meant with me, or what He meant to make of me.

I'm probably 20 percent atheist and 80 percent agnostic. I don't think anyone really knows. You'll either find out or not when you get there, until then there's no point thinking about it.

Is all our Life, then but a dream Seen faintly in the golden gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?

There is someone who is living my life. And I know nothing about him.

I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.

What am I? Do I know? I am a man: quite simply, a 'breather.'

I do not know how to distinguish between waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?