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William Barrett Quotes

Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.

Hunger is not the worst feature of unemployment; idleness is.

William Barrett
Unemployment, Hunger, Jobless

It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our nose is what we see last.

William Barrett
Inspirational, Life, Elude Us

Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread.

William Barrett
Anxiety, Feelings, Uncanny

Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everythingand that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.

William Barrett
Men, Hands, Greek

We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures.

William Barrett
May, Able, Humans
William Barrett (1978). “The illusion of technique: a search for meaning in a technological civilization”, Anchor Books

To discover one's own spiritual poverty is to achieve a positive conquest by the spirit.

William Barrett
Spiritual, Poverty, Achieve
William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.46, Anchor

The philosopher cannot seriously put to himself questions that his civilization has not lived.

William Barrett
Civilization, Philosopher
William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.20, Anchor

Modern Existentialism... is a total European creation, perhaps the last philosophic legacy of Europe to America or whatever other civilization is now on its way to supplant Europe.

William Barrett
Europe, Civilization, America
William Barrett (2011). “Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy”, p.14, Anchor

We exist within the question of God.

William Barrett

The bond that attaches us to the life outside ourselves is the same bond that holds us to our own life.

William Barrett

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our philosophies, then, merely the inevitable outcome of the body of fate and personal circumstance that is thrust upon each of us? Or are these beliefs the means by which we freely create ourselves as the persons we become? Here, at the very outset, the question of freedom already hovers in the background.

William Barrett
Philosophy, Spring, Character
William Barrett (1978). “The illusion of technique: a search for meaning in a technological civilization”, Anchor Books

Much like tobacco companies want to keep smokers dependent on their deadly product, the oil industry wants to keep California dependent on oil – an expensive, dirty and limited resource that damages health.

William Barrett
Dirty, Oil, California

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