Paul Sartre Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

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. — Jean-Paul Sartre

There is no reality exception in action. — Jean-Paul Sartre

My last son is leaving to go to college; my grandchildren are being born. My mother is living with me. — Sally Field

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The ability to cultivate the land is the growth of any nation. — Sunday Adelaja

France is going to endure, and I'll tell you [ISIS people who attacked Paris ] why. If you're in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good fucking luck, because go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology. They'll bring Jean-Paul Sartre, Edith Piaf, fine wine, Camus, Camembert, madeleines, macarons, Marcel Proust and the fucking croquembouche. You just brought a philosophy of rigorous self-abnegation to a pastry fight, my friend. You are fucked. — John Oliver

[E]very man ought to say to himself, Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions? — Jean-Paul Sartre

could we not conceive of a philosophy of existence linked, not solely to experiences of separation, forlornness, and profound melancholy, but also to feelings of hope and confidence? — Jean-Paul Sartre

You talk a lot about this amazing flow of time but you hardly see it. you see a women, you think that one day she'll be old, only you don't see her grow old. But there are moments when you think you see her grow old and feel yourself growing old with her: this is the feeling of adventure. — 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

Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Man is free rather than man is freedom. — Jean-Paul Sartre

My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of architecture, not a cold piece of convenience. — Luis Barragan

No social stability without individual stability. — Aldous Huxley

No problems are ever resolved by violence. It only aggravates the pain and the hurt on every side. — Pranab Mukherjee

In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Philosophy appears to some people as a homogenous milieu: there thoughts are born and die, there systems are built, and there, in turn, they collapse. Others take Philosophy for a specific attitude which we can freely adopt at will. Still others see it as a determined segment of culture. In our view Philosophy does not exist. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When you are on top of your stuff, which on its own will secure you continuous increase — Sunday Adelaja

I've been a member of Greenpeace since I was a teenager. — Alexander Skarsgard

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him. — 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

Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself. — Jean-Paul Sartre

A search for justification and the impossibility of justification are recurrent motifs in the philosophy of Sartre. His philosophy is one of the incarnations of problematism and of the ambiguity of contemporary thought (for Man does seem, to the contemporary mind, to be ambiguous). — Jean-Paul Sartre

One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes' argument "I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Before beginning this treatise, he wanted the advice of The Baboon, his philosophy prof. "Excuse me, sir," he said at the end of a class, "could anyone claim that we don't exist?" The Baboon said no. "Goghito," he said, "ergo zum. You exist because you doubt your existence. — Jean-Paul Sartre

There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines say what this man is before he dies, or what mankind is before it has disappeared. — Jean-Paul Sartre

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke. — Anthony Jeselnik

I'm not J.Lo, she's not a real person. She was just a bit of fun that got really crazy. I've never been anyone but Jennifer. I was going to call the album Call Me Jennifer because that would be my way of saying goodbye to the whole J.Lo thing. But Rebirth is perfect because it means so much more. — Jennifer Lopez

But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almost have touched it. But it was inert - if it were to live and find expression and suffer, he must lend it his own body. It was other people's anger. "Swine!" He clenched his fists, he strode along, but nothing came, the anger remained external to himself. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Be out of the mainstream. I'm out of the mainstream. I enjoy it, who wants to be in the mainstream? — Bill Maher

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon. — Jean-Paul Sartre

No matter how much you're tempted or provoked to speak. Never speak where you don't need to. — Sarvesh Jain

First, it has been charged with inviting people to remain in a kind of desperate quietism because, since no solutions are possible, we should have to consider action in this world as quite impossible. We should then end up in a philosophy of contemplation; and since contemplation is a luxury, we come in the end to a bourgeois philosophy. The communists in particular have made these charges. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Her sordid family history ultimately caused my family's demise. How can I continue to loath, hate, and despise a man who created the love of my life? We both have some soul searching to do. She needs to come to terms with who she is and where she came from. I need to come to terms with the hatred that's filled my heart for so many years. — A.M. Madden

Sartre proposed that all situations be judged according to how they appeared in the eyes of those most oppressed, or those whose suffering was greatest. Martin Luther King Jr. was among the civil rights pioneers who took an interest. While working on his philosophy of non-violent resistance, he read Sartre, Heidegger and the German-American existentialist theologian Paul Tillich. — Sarah Bakewell