Character Quote by Immanuel Kant

Without a firm idea of himself and the purpose of his life, man cannot live, and would sooner destroy himself than remain on earth,…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Cut off from his religious, metaphysical and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.

— Eugene Ionesco

“By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man–every man–is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the…

— Ayn Rand

Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Sink the Bible to the bottom of the ocean, and man's obligations to God would be unchanged. He would have the same path to…

— Henry Ward Beecher

What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed…

— George Santayana

Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind

— George Gaylord Simpson

The world began without man, and it will end without him.

— Claude Levi-Strauss

If a man were to place himself in an attitude to bear manfully the greatest evil that can be inflicted on him, he would…

— Henry David Thoreau

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on…

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but…

— Jean-Paul Sartre

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.

— Claude Levi-Strauss