"If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature, In other words, there is ...












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

More Jean-Paul Sartre quotes
"Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being who...
"What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and define...
"I murmur: "It's a seat," a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go and put itself on the thing. It stays what it is, ...
"I feel my hand. I am these two beasts struggling at the end of my arms. My hand scratches one of its paws with the nail of the other paw; I feel its w...
"Couldn't I try...Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune...But couldn't I in another medium?...It would have to be a book: I don't know how to ...
"This instant which I cannot leave, which locks me in and limits me on every side, this instant I am made of will be no more than a confused dream.
"I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.
"He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, bene...
"Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, no...