Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism. His work has also influenced sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies, and continues to influence these disciplines. These Jean Paul Sartre quotes will motivate you to achieve success.
Best Jean Paul Sartre Quotes
- “If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“We are our choices.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “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.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “the worst part about being lied to is knowing you weren’t worth the truth” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Before you come alive, life is nothing; it ‘s up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever.
When you realize that by changing your perspective, big things can be seen as little things, it becomes much harder to worry about anything. Commitment is an act, not a word.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre - “I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I
am still choosing.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre - “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“Your judgment judges you and defines you” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “If you seek authenticity for authenticity’s sake you are no longer authentic.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “We make our own hell out of the people around us.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“Words are loaded pistols.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “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.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. [It is a matter of choice, not chance.] Such is the first principle of existentialism.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre , Jean Paul Sartre quotes on existentialism
- “We do not judge the people we love.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“Commitment is an act, not a word.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“To choose not to choose is still to act.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Nothingness haunts Being.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “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.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Death is a continuation of my life without me.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn’t generosity-it’s only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “In love, one and one are one.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre , Jean Paul Sartre quotes on love
- “Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“Life begins on the other side of despair.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “In wanting freedom we discover that it depends entirely on the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends on ours. . . I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. I can take freedom as my goal only if I take that of others as a goal as well.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“Man is what he wills himself to be.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I am. I am, I exist, I think, therefore I am; I am because I think, why do I think? I don’t want to think anymore, I am because I think that I don’t want to be, I think that I . . . because . . . ugh!” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “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.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“It is only in our decisions that we are important.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “A kiss without a mustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “It is disgusting — Why must we have bodies?” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Because we can imagine, we are free.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “The individual’s duty is to do what he wants to do, to think whatever he likes, to be accountable to no one but himself, to challenge every idea and every person.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
-
“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “I had spent my time counterfeiting eternity.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Hell is other people at breakfast.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “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.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Once freedom lights its beacon in man’s heart, the gods are powerless against him.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “Man is the being whose project it is to be God.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
