Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes (125 Quotes)


    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 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.

    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.

    One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else.

    We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.


    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.


    Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

    Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

    All the same, they books do serve some purpose. Culture doesn't save anything or anyone, it doesn't justify. But it's a product of man he projects himself into it, he recognizes himself in it that critical mirror alone offers him his image.

    Even this disability from which I suffer I have assumed by the very fact that I live I surpass ittoward my own projects, I make of it the necessary obstacle for my being and I cannot be crippledwithout choosing myself as crippled. This means that I choose the way I constitute my disability (as'unbearable', 'humiliating, 'to be hidden', 'to be revealed to all').

    There were the days when you peered into your self, into the secret places of your head, and what you saw there made you fear with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it, you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.


    Man is not the sum of what he has but the totality of what he does not yet have, of what he might have.

    The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

    The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

    I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

    If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.


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

    One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

    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.

    God does not exist... We are precisely on a plane where nothing exists but men.

    All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.


    As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

    Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal.

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



    She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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

    To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June

    If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

    I distrust the incommunicable it is the source of all violence.



    Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

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

    I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

    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.


    Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

    What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

    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.


    If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I'm still waiting, it's all been to seduce women basically.

    If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

    Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

    I am responsible for everything except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.


    Related Authors


    Sun Tzu - Lao Tzu - Heraclitus - Arthur Schopenhauer - Xenophanes - Thales - Plotinus - Marcus Fabius Quintilian - Guru Nanak - Anaxagoras


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