Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

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.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total... because it may well involve the whole world.

I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the source of rivers towards their source or plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment.

I am finishing a biography of [Gustave] Flaubert. Because he is the opposite of what I am. One needs to rub up against argument.

Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough.

It is always more valuable to report the truth.

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.

I know only one Church: it is the society of men.

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

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

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

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.

A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing.

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

What I lacked [in La Nausee] was a sense of reality. I have changed since. I have slowly learned to experience reality.

The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.

I grow warm, I begin to feel happy. There is nothing extraordinary in this, it is a small happiness of Nausea: it spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of out time - the time of purple suspenders, and broken chair seats; it is made of white, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain. No sooner than born, it is already old, it seems as though I have known it for twenty years.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

I wanted my own words. But the ones I use have dragged through I don't know how many consciences.

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.

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.

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

To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head

I don't know. Everything. Living. Smoking.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition.

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.

One should commit no stupidity twice, the variety of choice is, in the end, large enough.

I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.

Because we can imagine, we are free.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

Do you think I can read [Alain] Robbe-Grillet in an underdeveloped country? He does not feel himself maimed.

Some of these days, Oh, you'll miss me honey

A Soviet citizen, an official writer, once said to me: "The day when Communism (that is, well-being for everyone) reigns, man's tragedy will begin: his finitude."

What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

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

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.

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.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

As long as the writer cannot write for the two billion men who are hungry, he will be oppressed by a feeling of malaise.