Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

Hell is—other people!

Commitment is an act, not a word

Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she should have no taste for life for months afterwa...

Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the mea...

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose n...

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of ...

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word,...

the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth

Man is free rather than man is freedom.

Life has no meaning, the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

Once you hear the details of victory it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

The bond between being and non-being can be only internal. It is within being qua being that non-bei...

The most clear-sided view of the darkest possible situation is itself an act of optimism

If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into ...

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one...

Nothingness haunts Being.

In love, one and one are one.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Two people can form a community by excluding a third.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, wh...

Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

Man lives in the midst of images. Literature offers him a critical image of himself.

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would cha...

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if ...

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, tur...

We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing fre...

For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances...

There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the exten...

You're lucky. I'm always conscious of myself —in my mind. Painfully conscious.

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? P...

It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they ...

There is no reality except in action.

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibi...

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

[E]very man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a...

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, enc...

The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for th...

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt ...

I murmur: "It's a seat," a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go ...

It is the reflection of my face. Often in these lost days I study it: I can understand nothing of th...

After all, she is lucky. I have been much too calm these past three years. I can receive nothing mor...

Ama bardağımın dibinde biram ılıksa, aynada koyu renkli lekeler varsa, fazlalıksam; en içten ve en k...

You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think tha...

I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me,and I have followed the source of rivers towar...

My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them...

So you realized that there were always women in tears, or a red-headed man, or something else to spo...

But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I ra...

I see the insipid flesh blossoming and palpitating with abandon.

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is...

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's al...

...freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before ne...

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp,...

When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves sav...

Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.

Man is fully responsible for his nature, choices and lifestyle.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

We do not judge the people we love.

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The fi...

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

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

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he...

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

People are like dice. We throw ourselves in the direction of our own choosing.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.

The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I ta...

Death is a continuation of my life without me...

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed...

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, si...

There are two ways to go to the gas chamber, free and not free.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of anoth...

Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or...

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

But I can't see anything any more: however much I search the past I can only retrieve scraps of imag...

The best work is not what is most difficult for you it is what you do best.

All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.