Jean Paul Sartre: Trending quotes

“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”

“It is freedom, it is particularity, it is solitude that we are aiming at, and not Evil for its own sake”

“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.”

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.”

“I want to leave, to go somewhere where I should be really in my place, where I would fit in… but my place is nowhere; I am unwanted.”

“What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.”

“If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.”

“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.”

“Existence is not something which lets itself be thought of form a distance; it must invade you suddenly, master you, weigh heavily on your heart like a great motionless beast - or else there is nothing at all.”

“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.”

“God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.”

“Reflection poisons desire.”

“But I must finally realize that I am subject to these sudden transformations. The thing is that I rarely think; a crowd of small metamorphoses accumulate in me without my noticing it, and then, one fine day, a veritable revolution takes place.”

“I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.”

“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.”

“I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It
always made me want to do just the opposite.”

“Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.”

“One could only damage oneself through the harm one did to others. One could never get directly at oneself.”

“Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.”