Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

305 Sourced Quotes

He wanted to assume his entire condition, to carry the world on his shoulders and to become, in defiance of all, what all have made of him.

Jean-Paul Sartre
When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.

Jean-Paul Sartre
We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

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
Now I am weary and I can no longer tell good from Evil, and I need someone to show me the way.

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
You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.

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
What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never use it for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.

Jean-Paul Sartre
She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

Jean-Paul Sartre
But when they have realized that it [society] rejects them forever, they themselves assume the ostracism of which they are victims so as not to leave the initiative to their oppressors

Jean-Paul Sartre
I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my throat, it caresses me- and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

Jean-Paul Sartre
As for us, my little friend, we entered [the Communist Party] because we were tired of dying of hunger.

Jean-Paul Sartre
She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Jean-Paul Sartre
If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.

Jean-Paul Sartre
As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.

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
Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.

Jean-Paul Sartre
The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual…it is a form of madness.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.

Jean-Paul Sartre
The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us
…for one cannot enter an image unless one makes oneself imaginary

Jean-Paul Sartre
I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

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
Monsieur … I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

Jean-Paul Sartre