"I exist. Is this a life still? No, just vegetating. It seems that only one philosophy can succeed the philosophy of existentialism: nonexistentialism, the philosophy of nonexistent existence."

Imre Kertész Literature See all quotes by Imre Kertész →

React to this quote

More by Imre Kertész

“You just sit here and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.”

“Man, when reduced to nothing, or in other words a survivor, is not tragic but comic, because he has no fate.”

“Man is always a little at fault, that’s all.”

“At any rate I found myself writing because I had to write, although I didn’t know why.”

“Anyone who wants something else is Jewish.”

“I am sick of atrocities, though these are now the natural order of our world. And I would still like to act!”

Resonant Thoughts

"If life hands your research department lemons and a recipe, you shouldn’t be surprised if they make lemonade for you. Or, better still, anti-lemonade countermeasures."

— Charles Stross

Literature1964

#life

"The one thing any of us really cared about was living for one more hour, one more hour is a big deal in a world where everything has reduced itself to murder."

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Literature1894–1961

#life

"From this point of view too we understand the idea of God as a logical fulfillment of the Agape side of man’s nature. Freud seems to have scorned Agape as he scorned the religion that preached it. He …"

— Ernest Becker

Literature1924–1974

#nature

"A good skeptical mind doesn't waste itself on drugs or ideology, and prefers to break the rules in our minds, in the form of humor, rather than in real life."

— Mark Rosenfelder

Literature

#life