“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.”
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Famous Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes
“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”
“When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.”
“Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.”
“Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.”
“I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“Life begins on the other side of despair.”
Source: Nausea
“The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.”
“Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.”
Source: Existentialism
“Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.”
“Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.”
Source: No exit, and three other plays
“It is only in our decisions that we are important.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
Source: Nausea
“Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.”
“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”
“Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“God is absence. God is the solitude of man.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
Source: Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr
“No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.”
Source: Being and Nothingness
“For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.”
“I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.”
“I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.”
“If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.”
Source: Essays in Aesthetics
“One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.”
“What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”