Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

( Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre ( 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Marxism, and was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism. His work continues to influence fields such as Marxist philosophy, sociology, critical theory and literary studies. Sartre was also noted for his long non-monogamous relationship with the feminist author and social theorist Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused it, saying that he always declined official honours and that, "a writer should not allow himself to be turned into an institution. )

1. Nothingness haunts being.
    
2. Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.
    
3. Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.
    
4. Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
    
5. You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.
    
6. Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.
    
7. Life has no meaning a priori … It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.
    
8. Man is condemned to be free;
   because once thrown into the world,
   he is responsible for everything he does.
   It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.
    
9. We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.
    
10. I am responsible for everything ... except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world ... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
     
11. I felt less alone when I didn’t know you yet: I was waiting for the other. I thought only of his strength and never of my weakness. And now here you are, Orestes, it was you. I look at you and I see that we are two orphans.
     
12. 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.
     
13. Man is what he wills himself to be.
     
14. I hate victims who respect their executioners.
     
15. All human activities are equivalent ... and ... all are on principle doomed to failure.
     
16. What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.
     
17. 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?
     
18. Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.
     
19. Blood doubly unites us, for we share the same blood and we have spilled blood.
     
20. Your church is a whore: she sells her favors to the rich.
     
21. I know only one Church: it is the society of men.
     
22. Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.
     
23. A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.
     
24. 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.
     
25. There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
     
26. One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are — your life, and nothing else.
     
27. Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
     
28. There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.
     
29. As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
     
30. Life begins on the other side of despair.
     
31. There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.
     
32. There is a universe behind and before him. And the day is approaching when closing the last book on the last shelf on the far left; he will say to himself, "now what?”