Quotes & Sayings About Sartre

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

French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

To be is to do - Socrates To do is to be - Sartre Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra — Kurt Vonnegut

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

The significant difference between Proust and Faulkner, for Sartre, is that where Proust discovers salvation in time, in the recovery of time past, for Faulkner time is never lost, however much he may want, like a mystic, to forget time. Both writers emphasize the transitoriness of emotion, of the condition of love or misery, or whatever passes because it is transitory in time. "Proust really should have employed a technique like Faulkner's," Sartre legislates, "that was the logical outcome of his metaphysic. Faulkner, however, is a lost man, and because he knows that he is lost he risks pushing his thoughts to its conclusion. Proust is a classicist and a Frenchman; and the French lose themselves with caution and always end by finding themselves. — John McCormick

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

The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself. — Stokely Carmichael

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

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

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

No one saves an e-mail, because it's so inherently impersonal. I worry about posterity in general. All the great love letters - from Simone de Beauvoir to Sartre, from Samuel Clemens to his wife, Olivia - I don't know, I always think about what will be lost - — Gillian Flynn

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we "must" go to work, or we "must" live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly". — Jostein Gaarder

Everything comes to us from others. To Be is to belong to someone. — 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

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

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

I identify with my culture, but I am happy to be living on a tolerant, intellectual island where I can deal with Dostoyevsky and Sartre, both great influences for me. — Orhan Pamuk

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live. — Jostein Gaarder

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm. — 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

Most of the books I have are indicators of my insecurity. I really wanted to be an intellectual. I really wanted to understand Sartre. I thought that was what made people smart. I have tried to read Being and Nothingness no fewer than twenty times in my life. I really thought that every answer had to be in that book. Maybe it is. The truth is, I can't read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. I underline profusely but I don't retain much. Reading is like a drug. When I am reading from these books it feels like I am thinking what is being read, and that gives me a rush. That is enough. I glean what I can. I finish some of the unfinished thoughts lingering around in my head by adding the thoughts of geniuses and I build from there. There are bookmarks in most of the denser tomes at around page 20 to 40 because that was where I said, "I get it." Then I put them back on the shelf. — Marc Maron

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

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

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflection poisons desire. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Sartre gazed upon Freya's beauty, continuously reminding himself that he should not stare. Every time that he let his guard down, his eye wandered back to her cherry lips. He wanted to know if they tasted as good as they looked. He trailed down and noticed how the slight cleft in her chin served to accentuate the much deeper cleft between her breasts.

Freya detected Sartre skimming her body. She liked it. This frail little man with the crazy eye was so much different than the strong, muscular brutes that she was used to. He was a cute little oddity. — Dylan Callens

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