Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

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

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

I said to myself, 'I want to die decently'.

The recent experiences of pocketbooks prove this. I have changed my public since my works have been published in a smaller format.

There it is: I am gently slipping into the water's depths, towards fear.

I discovered suddenly that alienation, exploitation of man by man, under-nourishment, relegated to the background metaphysical evil which is a luxury.

I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in . . . but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.

I do not think therefore I am a moustache

For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion.

I have changed as everyone changes: within a permanency.

Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

To choose not to choose is still to act.

A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out.

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.

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

Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness, and dies by accident

There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.

I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.

it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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.

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

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.

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

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.

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.

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Love or hatred calls for self-surrender. He cuts a fine figure, the warm-blooded, prosperous man, solidly entrenched in his well-being, who one fine day surrenders all to love—or to hatred; himself, his house, his land, his memories.

Words There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better; to have them, what iniquity!

The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don't want to change the world; you want to blow it up.

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.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

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

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.

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

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.

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

So much torture, bloodshed, deceit. You cannot make your young people practice torture twenty-four hours a day and not expect to pay a price for it.

Because the Nazi venom worked its way even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest; because an all-powerful police sought to force us into silence every word became as precious as a declaration of principle; because we were persecuted, each of our gestures carried the weight of a commitment.

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

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

Existence precedes and rules essence.

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.

We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.

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

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?

Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.

Handing over a bank note is enough to make a bicycle belong to me, but my entire life is needed to realize this possession.