Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes on God
Jean-Paul Sartre was an avowed atheist, and the quotes gathered here show how the absence of God functioned in his existentialism. For Sartre, taking atheism seriously means following it through: God does not exist, he wrote in Existentialism Is a Humanism, and it is therefore necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end. The chief consequence is human freedom and responsibility, for without God there is no author of values but humanity itself, so that justice is a human issue needing no divine teacher. Sartre presents God less as a metaphysical question than as an obstacle to be cleared away by those who want to change life. In his play The Flies the gods feed on human fear and bad faith, while genuine freedom is the secret they dread. These passages treat God's absence as the starting point of an ethics of freedom.
Quotes
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“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 -
“For those who want 'to change life", 'to reinvent love,' God is nothing but a hindrance.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | p. 500 -
“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 -
“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 -
“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