“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

Last update Feb. 8, 2025. History

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Friedrich Nietzsche655

German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and cl… 1844–1900

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“The central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”

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“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

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“What's the point anyway — Of suffering, dying? It teaches us to live, boy. A man who does not struggle does not live, he survives.”

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“The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons. Because if we’re going to be forced to suffer by simply existing, we might as well learn how to suffer well.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

“Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

“Etymologically, patient means sufferer. It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades. That illness can be not an epic of suffering but the occasion of some kind of self-transcendence is affirmed by sentimental literature and, more convincingly, by case histories offered by doctor-writers. Some illnesses seem more apt than others for this kind of meditation.”

Susan Sontag book AIDS and Its Metaphors

Source: AIDS and Its Metaphors, (1989), ch. 4, p. 125, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-312-42013-7 ; later published in combination with Illness As Metaphor. This combined edition is the one referenced here.

“I believe that I was lucky to have suffered. Some people don’t realize that in suffering there is great potential, because if you are deprived for any reason… Politically, financially, socially or otherwise… and if you set your mind in the right direction, you will find that the only way to survive is for you to excel, by being better so you can be treated better.”

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh (1938) Jordanian businesspeople

December 2006, Interview with Jordan Business magazine entitled “The Grass is Greener … On Both Sides”.

“If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984), p. 67 in the 1959 Beacon Press edition

“I can’t afford the luxury of despair or pessimism. We still have to hope. We’re a timeless people, we’ve lived in a timeless land. We have suffered the invasion of two hundred years, and we’ll go on suffering. But we are going to survive.”

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993) Aboriginal Australian poet, artist, teacher and campaigner for Indigenous rights

On the Aboriginal people in “‘Recording the Cries of the People’: AN INTERVIEW WITH OODGEROO (KATH WALKER)” http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1725&context=kunapipi in Kunapipi (1988)

“Sensitivity to the death and suffering of boys and men is in competition with our survival instinct.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 36

“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

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Friedrich Nietzsche655

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