Paul Sartre Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals. — Jean-Paul Sartre

But you have to choose: live or tell. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Nothingness haunts Being. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I scraped my heel against this black claw: I wanted to peel off some of the bark. For no reason at all, out of defiance, to make the bare pink appear absurd on the tanned leather: to play with the absurdity of the world. But, when I drew my heel back, I saw that the bark was still black. — 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

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 aim of language ... is to communicate ... to impart to others the results one has obtained ... As I talk, I reveal the situation ... I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it. — Jean-Paul Sartre

L'homme est condamne a' e tre libre. Man is condemned to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it any more. My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When one does nothing, one believes oneself responsible for everything. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Commitment is an act, not a word — Jean-Paul Sartre

It looked like a colour, but also ... like a bruise or a secretion, like an oozing-and something else, an odour, for example, it melted into the odour of wet earth, warm, moist wood, into a black odour that spread like varnish over this sensitive wood, in a flavour of chewed, sweet fibre. I did not simply see this black: sight is an abstract invention, a simplified idea, one of man's ideas. That black, amorphous, weakly presence, far surpassed sight, smell and taste. But this richness was lost in confusion and finally was no more because it was too much. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre. — Thom Gunn

I admire the way we can lie, putting reason on our side. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The status of 'native' is a nervous condition introduced and maintained by the settler among colonized people with their consent. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When I was little, my Aunt Bigeois told me "If you look at yourself too long in the mirror, you'll see a monkey." I must have looked at myself even longer than that: what I see is well below the monkey, on the fringe of the vegetable world, at the level of jellyfish... The eyes especially are horrible seen so close. They are glassy, soft, blind, red-rimmed, they look like fish scales... A silky white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it is a geological embossed map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I cannot say I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which stupefies me. — Jean-Paul Sartre

There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It's just what people do when they're getting old, when they're sick of themselves and their life; they think of money and take care of themselves. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Is there really nothing, nothing left of me? — Jean-Paul Sartre

Will you do me the honour of lunching with me on Wednesday?" "With pleasure." I had as much desire to eat with him as I had to hang myself. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be - and behind them . . . there is nothing. This — Jean-Paul Sartre

Let it crumble! Let the rocks revile me and flowers wilt at my coming. Your whole universe is not enough to prove me wrong. You are the king of gods, king of stones and stars, king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of man. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Many people are walking along the shore, turning poetic springtime faces towards the sea; they're having a holiday because of the sun. [ ... ] The true sea is cold and black, full of animals; it crawls under this thin green film made to deceive human beings. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I go out. Why? Well,because I have no reason not to go out either — Jean-Paul Sartre

I do not think therefore I am a moustache — Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre says that 'Hell is other people!' In the name of completing this sentence we must also say this: 'Heaven is other people too! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I want to leave, go to some place where I will be really in my own niche, where I will fit in. . . . But my place is nowhere; I am unwanted, de trop. The — Jean-Paul Sartre

It is only in our decisions that we are important. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When I can't see myself in the mirror, I can't even feel myself, and I begin to wonder if I exist at all. — 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

Men equally honest, equally devoted to their fatherland, are momentarily separated by different conceptions of their duty. — Jean-Paul Sartre

No, my child, these things are impossible. It would have been better if she had recognize the truth courageously. She would have suffered once, then time would have erased with its sponge. There is nothing like looking things in the face, believe me. — Jean-Paul Sartre

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.'
I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything in my past, in my training, everything that has been most essential in my activity up to now has made me above all a man who writes, and it is too late for that to change. — Jean-Paul Sartre

God is dead. Let us not understand by this that he does not exist or even that he no longer exists. He is dead. He spoke to us and is silent. We no longer have anything but his cadaver. Perhaps he
slipped out of the world, somewhere else like the soul of a dead man. Perhaps he was only a dream ... God is dead. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish. — 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

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way. — Jean-Paul Sartre

He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Suspicious: that's what they were, the sounds, the smells, the tastes. When they ran quickly under your nose like startled hares and you didn't pay too much attention, you might believe them to be simple and reassuring, you might believe that there was real blue in the world, real red, a real perfume of almonds or violets. But as soon as you held on to them for an instant, this feeling of comfort and security gave way to a deep uneasiness: colours, tastes, and smells were never real, never themselves and nothing but
themselves. — 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

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

The existent individual, as Kierkegaard defines him, is first of all he who is in an infinite relationship with himself and has an infinite interest in himself and his destiny. Secondly, the existent individual always feels himself to be in Becoming, with a task before him; — Jean-Paul Sartre

I am myself and I am here. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding — Jean-Paul Sartre

Her eyes stare at me but she seems not to see me; she looks as though she were lost in her suffering. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The Intellectual is someone who meddles in what does not concern him. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre

One can be very fertile without having to work too much. Three hours in the morning. Three hours in the evening. This is my only rule. - Jean-Paul Sartre — Mason Currey

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The consciousness that says 'I am' is not the consciousness that thinks. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I was escaping from Nature and at last becoming myself, that Other whom I was aspiring to be in the eyes of others. — Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent;" my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith. — Jean-Paul Sartre

A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing - not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence - which is limited only by existence. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything is silent again: but it isn't the same silence. It's raining: tapping lightly against the frosted glass windows; if there are any more masked children in the street, the rain is going to spoil their cardboard masks. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men. — Jean-Paul Sartre

How can I, who was not able to retain my own past, hope to save that of another? — Jean-Paul Sartre

The recruit who reports for active duty at the beginning of the war can in some instances be afraid of death, but more often he is 'afraid of being afraid'; that is, he is filled with anguish before himself. — Jean-Paul Sartre

And I too wanted to be. That is all I wanted; and this is the last word. At the bottom of all these attempts which seemed without bounds, I find the same desire again: to drive existence out of me, to rid the passing moments of their fat, to twist them, dry them, purify myself, harden myself, to give back at last the sharp, precise sound of a saxophone note. That could even make an apologue: there was a poor man who got in the wrong world. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Remember, Orestes: you were part of my herd, you grazed in the fields along with my sheep. Your liberty is nothing but a mange eating away at you, it is nothing but an exile. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers? Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little. — Jean-Paul Sartre

But you looked much more like a fellow who had just realised that he has been living on ideas that don't pay. — 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

Her smiles, her mimicries, all the words she uttered were addressed to herself through him. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The self is who we truly are, but the persona or mask (the word comes from the Latin for an actor's mask) is the face we turn to the world in order to deal with it. A persona is absolutely necessary, but the problem is that we often become identified with it, to the detriment of our self, a dilemma that the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre recognized in his notion of mauvaise foi, or "bad faith," when one becomes associated exclusively with one's social role. — Gary Lachman

Death is a continuation of my life without me... — Jean-Paul Sartre

And you know what wickedness is, and shame, and fear. There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. — Jean-Paul Sartre

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.
But you have to choose: live or tell. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul. — Jean-Paul Sartre

E is betrayed by the cynical sparkle of her eyes, by her sophisticated look. Real ladies do not know the price of things, they like adorable follies; their eyes are like beautiful, hothouse flowers. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I discovered in belles-lettres that the Giver can be transformed into his own Gift, that is, into a pure object. Chance had made me a man, generosity would make me a book. JEAN-PAUL SARTRE — Lewis Hyde

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked? — Jean-Paul Sartre

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done. — Jean-Paul Sartre

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

But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar. — 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

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse. — Jean-Paul Sartre

What is boredom? It is when there is simultaneously too much and not enough. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Well, you're free without wanting to be,' he explained, 'it just happens so, that's all. But Mathieu's freedom is based on reason.'
'I still don't understand,' said Lola, shaking her head.
'Well, he doesn't care a curse about his apartment: he lives there just as he would live anywhere else, and I've got the feeling that he doesn't care much about his girl. He stays with her because he must sleep with someone. His freedom isn't visible, it's inside him. — Jean-Paul Sartre

...man is a useless passion. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The rain has stopped, the air is mild, the sky slowly rolls up fine black images : it is more than enough to frame the perfect moment ; to reflect these images, she would cause dark little tides to be born in our hearts. I don't know how to take advantage of the occasion : I walk at random, calm and empty, under this wasted sky. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I am free,' he said suddenly. And his joy changed, on the spot, to a crushing sense of anguish. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Reflection poisons desire. — Jean-Paul Sartre

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution. — Jean-Paul Sartre

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves ... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Hell is for other people. — 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

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. — Jean-Paul Sartre

If a Jew is fascinated by Christians it is not because of their virtues, which he values little, but because they represent anonymity, humanity without race. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist. — Jean-Paul Sartre

To keep hope alive one must, in spite of all mistakes, horrors, and crimes, recognize the obvious superiority of the socialist camp. — Jean-Paul Sartre