Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

305 Sourced Quotes

Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.
For man holds his ground only by surpassing himself, in the same sense in which it is said that one ceases to love if one does not love increasingly everyday.

Jean-Paul Sartre
If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Jean-Paul Sartre
To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.

Jean-Paul Sartre
He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?
Hugo: No.
Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.
Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.

Jean-Paul Sartre
A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

Jean-Paul Sartre
So that's what Hell is: I'd never have believed it…Do you remember, brimstone, the stake, the gridiron?…What a joke! No need of a gridiron, Hell is other people.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

Jean-Paul Sartre
You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.

Jean-Paul Sartre
In a world, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Do you think that I count the days? 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
You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Jean-Paul Sartre
…the impossible must be supposed in order to explain the superdetermination of the event

Jean-Paul Sartre
God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I am a man, Jupiter, and each man must invent his own path.

Jean-Paul Sartre