Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

305 Sourced Quotes

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I
am still choosing.

Jean-Paul Sartre
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
Man can will nothing 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
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
The strangest mores of the most of-the-way societies will, in spite of everything, be relatively comprehensible to the person who has a flesh-and-blood knowledge of man's needs, anxieties, and hopes. If, on the other hand, this experience is lacking, he will not even be able to understand the customs of those about him.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years.

Jean-Paul Sartre
You see, I'm fond of teasing, it's a second nature with me—and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer; I don't tease nicely.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything.

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 mistrust illuminations: what we take for a discovery is very often only a familiar thought that we have not recognized.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.

Jean-Paul Sartre
We were too light, Electra. Now our feet press down in the earth like the wheels of a cart in its groove. Come with me, and we will walk heavily, bending under the weight of our heavy load.

Jean-Paul Sartre
I have nothing but contempt for you idiotic chosen ones who have the heart to rejoice when there are the damned in Hell and the poor on earth; as for me, I am on the side of men and I will not leave it.

Jean-Paul Sartre
The dreamer must contaminate the others by his dream, he must make them fall into it

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

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
Communism I like, but Communist intellectuals are savages.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Jupiter: I gave you the liberty to serve me.
Orestes: That is possible, but it has turned against you and there is nothing either one of us can do about it.

Jean-Paul Sartre
We will not go to Heaven, Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.

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
…the prisoner's dreams is the guard's spirituality

Jean-Paul Sartre
Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Virtue is the death of conscience because it is the habit of Good, and yet the ethic of the honest man infinitely prefers virtue to the noblest agonies of conscience. Thus, being poses nonbeing and eliminates it. There is only being

Jean-Paul Sartre