Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes
Jean-Paul Sartre was a 20th-century French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist, the leading public exponent of existentialism in the post-war period. His major philosophical work, Being and Nothingness, develops a phenomenological account of consciousness, freedom, and the situated character of human existence. The quotes below are attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre, organized by topic.
Browse Jean-Paul Sartre by topic
Jean-Paul Sartre on Death
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“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”
L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945) -
“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.”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 3 -
“It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo to Jessica, on his plans to kill Hoederer, Act 5, sc. 2 -
“If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.”
The Devil and the Good Lord(1951) | Act 1 -
“But since he has decided to have the impossibility of living, every misfortune is an opportunity which lays this importance of living before his eyes and obliges him to decide, once again, to die.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 158 -
“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.”
No Exit(1944)
Jean-Paul Sartre on Freedom
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“Man is condemned to be free.”
Existentialism Is a Humanism, 1946 -
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”
p. 41 -
“Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.”
L’important n’est pas ce qu’on fait de nous mais ce que nous faisons nous-même de ce qu’on a fait de nous. -
Attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre:
“We are our choices.”
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“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom .”
L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936) -
“A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.”
The Flies(1943) | King Aegistheus, Act 2 -
“Jupiter : I gave you the liberty to serve me. Orestes : That is possible, but it has turned against you and there is nothing either one of us can do about it.”
The Flies(1943) | Act 3 -
“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.”
The Flies(1943) | Jupiter, Act 3 -
“Jupiter : I am not your king, impudent larva? Who then has created you? Orestes : You. But you should not have created me free.”
The Flies(1943) | Act 3
Jean-Paul Sartre on God
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“The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual...it is a form of madness.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 193 -
“They are in bad faith — they are afraid — and fear , bad faith have an aroma that the gods find delicious. Yes, the gods like that, the pitiful souls.”
The Flies(1943) | Act 1 -
“And when we speak of "abandonment" - a favorite word of Heidegger - we only mean to say that God does not exist and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end.”
Existentialism Is a Humanism(1946) | pp. 32–33
Jean-Paul Sartre on Justice
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“What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”
The Flies(1943) | Orestes, Act 2 -
“Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 2 -
“The French bourgeois doesn't dislike shit, provided it is served up to him at the right time.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | Book 2, "To Succeed in Being All, Strive to be Nothing in Anything" -
“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.”
The Flies(1943) | Act 1
Jean-Paul Sartre on Knowledge
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“L'imagination ( Imagination: A Psychological Critique ) (1936)”
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom . -
“What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?”
Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948) -
“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)" preface, Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poésie Nègre et Malgache (1948)”
What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? -
“Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)”
Every age has its own poetry ; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry. -
“The painful secret of Gods and kings; it is that men are free. They are free, Aegisthus. You know it and they don't.”
The Flies(1943) | As quoted in Sartre : A Philosophic Study (1966), by Anthony Manser, p. 227 -
“Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6 -
“People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?”
Nausea(1938) | Diary entry of Friday (2 February) -
“If only you knew how little I care. Cowardly or not, as long as he is a good kisser.”
No Exit(1944) | Estelle on Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
Jean-Paul Sartre on Life
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“Hell is other people.”
Alors, c'est ça l'enfer. Je n'aurais jamais cru... vous vous rappelez: le soufre, le bûcher, le gril... ah! Quelle plaisanterie. Pas besoin de gril, l'enfer, c'est les autres. -
“Existence precedes essence.”
L'existence précède et commande l'essence. -
Attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre:
“Life begins on the other side of despair.”
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“He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism , smiling tolerance , resignation , common sense stoicism - all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.”
L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945) -
“But, if it will help ease your irritated souls, please know, dearly departed, that you have ruined our lives.”
The Flies(1943) | Aegistheus, Act 2 -
“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.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | Book 2, "The Melodious Child Dead in Me"
Jean-Paul Sartre on Love
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“For those who want 'to change life", 'to reinvent love,' God is nothing but a hindrance.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 500
Jean-Paul Sartre on Mind
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“L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)”
He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being. -
“L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945)”
He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism , smiling tolerance , resignation , common sense stoicism - all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.
Jean-Paul Sartre on Nature
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“For Genet, reflective states of mind are the rule. And although they are of an unstable nature in everyone, in him...reflection is always contrary to the reflected feeling.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 278 -
“We were too light, Electra. Now our feet press down in the earth like the wheels of a cart in its groove. Come with me, and we will walk heavily, bending under the weight of our heavy load.”
The Flies(1943) | Orestes, Act 3
Jean-Paul Sartre on Politics
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“If we must absolutely mention this state of affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves "absent", that is more proper.”
No Exit(1944) | Estelle, refusing to use the word "dead", Act 1, sc. 5
Jean-Paul Sartre on Time
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“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
Nausea, 1938 -
“Every age has its own poetry ; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”
Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus) -
“I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.”
Nausea(1938) | Diary entry of Friday (2 February), concerning a card game -
“I wanted for the moments in my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. It would be just as well to try to catch time by the tail.”
Nausea(1938)
Jean-Paul Sartre on Truth
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Attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre:
“Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.”
Jean-Paul Sartre on Virtue
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Attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre:
“Commitment is an act, not a word.”
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“I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.”
The Devil and the Good Lord(1951) | Act 3, sc. 5 -
“He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 165