“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.”

—  Martin Heidegger

Last update Oct. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and th…" by Martin Heidegger?
Martin Heidegger photo
Martin Heidegger 69
German philosopher 1889–1976

Related quotes

Ai Weiwei photo

“I have to respect my life, and free expression is part of my life. I can never really silence myself.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, You’re There but You’re Not Existing, 2012

Clarice Lispector photo

“I've never been free in my whole life. Inside I've always chased myself. I've become intolerable to myself. I live in a lacerating duality. I'm seemingly free, but I'm a prisoner inside of me.”

Clarice Lispector book A Breath of Life

Source: A Breath of Life

Emil M. Cioran photo

“As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Kuruvilla Pandikattu photo

“To look straight into the eyes of my death/ My non-being/ To face myself as living and dying/ In the bare nakedness of my life and non-life.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Death: Live It! p. 49.
Death: Live It! (2005)

Jacques Lipchitz photo

“All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer — at least the answer for myself. Art is an action against death. It is denial of death.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Source: Jacques Lipchitz: The Artist at Work, 1966, p. 202

Helen Keller photo

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished."”

Helen Keller book Optimism

But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?
Optimism (1903)

Ernest Becker photo

“The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Denial of Death (1973)
Source: "Human Character as a Vital Lie", p. 66

“War is not horrible all the time, as pacifists seem to believe. There are compensations for everything, and there is compensation in comradeship, intimacy, freedom from economic anxiety, the knowledge that once one's mind is adjusted to the worst that can happen – and that is a pretty bad and bloody wound or swift and sudden death – one settled down to existence as an Infantryman. Man is an adaptable animal – I acknowledge that myself. I adapted myself more easily to the environment of the trenches with its lice, filth, heat, stench, flies, dysentery, danger – I adapted myself to these more successfully, I repeat, than I have been able to adapt myself to this life as a shopkeeper.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 239

Albert Einstein photo

“I cannot conceive of anything after my physical death—perhaps it will end it all. The knowledge that I am now on this earth and a mysterious part of eternity is enough for me. My death will be an easy one, too, for since early youth I have always detached myself from family, friends, and surroundings. And should I live on, I have no fear of the next life. Whatever good I did helped to free me from myself. What a miserable creature man would be if he were good not for the sake of being good, but because religion told him that he would get a reward after this life, and that if he weren't good he'd be punished.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 104

Jean Paul Sartre photo

“I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Source: La náusea

Related topics