Top 466 Quotes & Sayings by Jean-Paul Sartre - Page 2

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

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

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

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

There is no salvation anywhere. The idea of salvation implies the idea of an absolute.

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.

Death is a continuation of my life without me.

I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don't want to think any more, I am because I think that I don't want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.

Introspection is always retrospection

In wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others, and that the freedom of others depends on ours. . . I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. I can take freedom as my goal only if I take that of others as a goal as well.

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.

Nothingness haunts Being.

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

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

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

It's quite an undertaking to start loving somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment right at the start where you have to jump across an abyss: if you think about it you don't do it.

Hell is other people at breakfast.

If you seek authenticity for authenticity's sake you are no longer authentic.

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.

He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever. When you realize that by changing your perspective, big things can be seen as little things, it becomes much harder to worry about anything. Commitment is an act, not a word.

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.

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.

What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence.

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.

I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity.

your judgement judges you and defines you

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. [It is a matter of choice, not chance.] Such is the first principle of existentialism.

In love, one and one are one.

We make our own hell out of the people around us.

To choose not to choose is still to act.

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.

We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn't generosity-it's only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.

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

Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and our inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.

the worst part about being lied to is knowing you werent worth the truth

Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose.

Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

There are two ways of destroying a people. Either condemn them en bloc or force them to repudiate the leaders they adopted. The second is the worse.

I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.

All I can do is make the best of what I am, become accustomed to it, evaluate the possibilities, and take advantage of them the best I can.

Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.

Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself.

Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.

What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death.

We are our choices.

Because we can imagine, we are free.

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.