Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

305 Sourced Quotes

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
Thus, Beauty is neither an appearance nor a being, but a relationship: the transformation of being into appearance

Jean-Paul Sartre
There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point.

Jean-Paul Sartre
In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.

Jean-Paul Sartre
If I relegate impossible Salvation to the prop-room, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.

Jean-Paul Sartre
The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don't want to change the world; you want to blow it up.

Jean-Paul Sartre
It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.

Jean-Paul Sartre
It is not the same thing. You are perhaps not lying, but you are not telling the truth.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn't exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn't possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey

Jean-Paul Sartre
Aegistheus, the kings have another secret.... Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the Gods can do nothing against that man. It is a matter for men to handle amongst themselves, and it is up to other men — and to them alone — to let him flee or to destroy him.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I am neither virgin nor priest enough to play with the inner life.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.

Jean-Paul Sartre
To whomever gives a kiss or a blow
Render a kiss or blow
But to whomever gives when you are unable to return
Offer all the hatred in your heart
For you were slaves and he enslaves you

Jean-Paul Sartre
All human actions are equivalent... and... all are on principle doomed to failure.

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

Jean-Paul Sartre
Your church is a whore: she sells her favors to the rich.

Jean-Paul Sartre
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
I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Jean-Paul Sartre