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Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

“Happiness has to be installed in each person as a state of affairs completely cut off from the process that brought it about and, in particular, from the real situation. Man has to be affected with happiness. It is a tonality given to him. Contradiction: if one does take care to give him happiness, it is because he is a free creature--but in order to give it to him, one turns him into an object.”

IfsMenGivingPersonsDoeRealStatesCareOrderTurnsGivenProcessSituationCuttingObjectsParticularCreaturesAffairTake CareContradictionAffected
Book:Notebooks for an Ethics
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“For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves.... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions.”

IfsKnowsWantGivingMayMomentsHandsSoundChanceAcceptingMusicBirthMusicianJazzNotesLeavingTinyHolesImpressionIntenseBitterMelody
Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
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“It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns...It goes, it goes ... and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I.”

IfsThinkingFeelsEndsWould BeExampleReturnTasteMouthsResponsiblePainfulSentencesFleshIf I CouldUnfinishedComplicityRuminationSketchy
Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
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“I think there is an enormous diference between speaking and writing. One rereads what one writes. But one might read it slowly or quickly. In other words, you do not know how long you will have to spend deliberating over a sentence. ... But if I listen to a tape recorder, the listening time is determined by the speed at which the tape turns and not by my own needs.”

IfsThinkingKnowsNeedsWritingLongMightTurnsMy OwnKnow HowListeningDeterminedSentencesSpeedEnormousTapeRecordersSpeaking And Writing
Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
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“Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.”

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Book:Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays
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“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.”

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Book:The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism
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“One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.”

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Author:Jean-Paul Sartre
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“She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.”

IfsWellsSometimesWould BeSufferingWishPleasureWonderCasesImpossibleSorrowDespairSingingBoundsMonotonousMisersMuttering
Book:Nausea
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“What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.”

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Book:The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism
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“He loves me, he doesn't love my bowels, if they showed him my appendix in a glass he wouldn't recognize it, he's always feeling me, but if they put the glass in his hands he wouldn't touch it, he wouldn't think, "that's hers," you ought to love all of somebody, the esophagus, the liver, the intestines. Maybe we don't love them because we aren't used to them, but if we saw them the way we saw our hands and arms maybe we'd love them; the starfish must love each other better than we do.”

IfsThinkingWayFeelingsHandsUsedSawsArmsOughtGlassesLove Each OtherLiverBowelsIntestinesAppendixStarfish
Book:The Wall: (Intimacy) and Other Stories
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“So it comes to this; one doesn’t need rest. Why bother about sleep if one isn’t sleepy? That stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wait a minute, there’s a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable? …Ah, I see; it’s life without a break.”

IfsNeedsShouldReasonWaitingSleepBreakMinutesBotherDisagreeableSleepyWhy BotherWhy NowNo Exit
Book:No exit, and three other plays
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“I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMomentsJobsPassionEnergyInspireStartingGenerosityExistentialismBlindnessPrecipiceNausea
Book:Nausea
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