Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

It answers the question that was tormenting you: my love, you are not 'one thing in my life' - not even the most important - because my life no longer belongs to me because...you are always me.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

You are -- your life, and nothing else.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Il n'y a de réalité que dans l'action.(There is no reality except in action.)

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Ama bardağımın dibinde biram ılıksa, aynada koyu renkli lekeler varsa, fazlalıksam; en içten ve en katışıksız acım, ayıbalığı gibi, hem bir yığın et hem gepgeniş bir deriyle ve insanın içine dokunan ıslak, ama kötülük dolu gözlerle sürüklenip hantallaşıyorsa bu benim kabahatim mi?

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almost have touched it. But it was inert - if it were to live and find expression and suffer, he must lend it his own body. It was other people's anger. Swine! He clenched his fists, he strode along, but nothing came, the anger remained external to himself.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

At an age when most children are playing hopscotch or with their dolls,you, poor child, who had no friends or toys, you toyed with dreams of murder, because that is a game to play alone.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ 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 the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Hell is—other people!

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the burning marl. Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.'I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Well, you're free without wanting to be,' he explained, 'it just happens so, that's all. But Mathieu's freedom is based on reason.''I still don't understand,' said Lola, shaking her head.'Well, he doesn't care a curse about his apartment: he lives there just as he would live anywhere else, and I've got the feeling that he doesn't care much about his girl. He stays with her because he must sleep with someone. His freedom isn't visible, it's inside him.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

He raised himself on his hands and looked at Irene's face: the nudity of that feminine body had risen into her face, the body had reabsorbed it, as nature reabsorbs forsaken gardens.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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 defines himself afterward.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

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

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre