Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

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

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

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

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

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...

Only he who knows how to speak can be silent.

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and s...

How come he cannot recognize his own cruelty now turned against him? How come he can't see his own s...

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a tem...

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you're thirsty -- that would be very much too simpl...

What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it.

Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that qu...

He raised himself on his hands and looked at Irene's face: the nudity of that feminine body had rise...

Let us see what words can do. Will you understand me, for a start, if I tell you that I have never k...

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the ri...

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

With older people, it's quite different. They're reliable, they show you what to do, and there's sol...

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted s...

She smiled and said with an ecstatic air: "It shines like a little diamond","What does?""This moment...

I go, I go away, I walk, I wander, and everywhere I go I bear my shell with me, I remain at home in ...

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

I've lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I've...

Well, you're free without wanting to be,' he explained, 'it just happens so, that's all. But Mathieu...

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 't...

But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almo...

Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah the soul-destroying boredo...

Love or hatred calls for self-surrender. He cuts a fine figure, the warm-blooded, prosperous man, so...

The first crime was mine: I committed it when I made man mortal. Once I had done that, what was left...

At an age when most children are playing hopscotch or with their dolls,you, poor child, who had no f...

You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not...

So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chamber...

I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. Italways made me want to do jus...

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must ent...

Much more likely you’ll hurt me. Still what does it matter? If I’ve got to suffer, it may as well be...

You are -- your life, and nothing else.

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

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their fr...

This instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in and limits me on every side, this instant I am ...

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think...and I can't stop myself from th...

I haven’t had any adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But ...

What sort of adventures?' I asked him, astonished. ‘All sorts, Monsieur. Getting on the wrong train....

Superfluity was the only relationship I could establish between these trees, these hedges, these pat...

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

It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than ...

He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when ...

People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nause...

A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the ...

Couldn't I try...Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune...But couldn't I in another medium?....

I feel my hand. I am these two beasts struggling at the end of my arms. My hand scratches one of its...

certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything anymore: I can sear...

Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feeli...

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.

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 ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to ref...

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Once freedom lights its beacon in a man's heart the gods are powerless against him.

There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us a...

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

She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a c...

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

Be self-indulgent, and those who are also self-indulgent will like you. Tear your neighbor to pieces...

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Man is not only that which he conceives himself to be, but that which he wills himself to be...

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

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not 'one thing in my life' - not e...