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Jean Paul Sartre Quotes
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321 Thought-Provoking Quotes on Individuality, Existence, and Life

Discover the profound wisdom of Jean Paul Sartre through a collection of thought-provoking quotes. From the importance of individuality and self-determination to the complexities of human existence, delve into the mind of this influential philosopher and explore his unique perspectives on life.

Jean-Paul Sartre was a prominent French philosopher, playwright, novelist, and political activist. He is considered a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism, known for his work in existentialism. Sartre's philosophy influenced various fields including sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. Despite declining official honors, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. Sartre had a significant relationship with feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir and together they challenged societal norms and expectations. The conflict between conformity and authenticity was a central theme in his early work.

Born on June 21, 1905 in Paris, Sartre showed an early interest in philosophy and literature. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure where he formed lifelong friendships with influential intellectuals of his time. Sartre's philosophical development was greatly influenced by attending seminars conducted by Alexandre Kojève. Throughout his life, Sartre actively engaged in political activism and social justice causes. He strongly opposed colonization and supported the Algerian War for independence from French rule as well as anti-American involvement in the Vietnam War. As a prolific writer, Sartre produced numerous works including plays such as "No Exit" and "The Flies". In later years, he renounced literature but continued to write about politics and issues of social import. Jean-Paul Sartre passed away on April 15, 1980 in Paris.

✵ 21. June 1905 – 15. April 1980  •  Other names Jean-Paule Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Jean Paul Sartre: 321 quotes51 likes

Jean Paul Sartre Quotes

“Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Orestes to Electra, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

“They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: “Give me bread.””

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 3, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“If only you knew how little I care. Cowardly or not, as long as he is a good kisser.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Estelle on Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)

“I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 3, sc. 5
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man’s politics, for the living.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 5, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“Monsieur … I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 4, sc. 5
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Miscellaneous
Source: Quotation #32866 from Michael Moncur's (Cynical) Quotations:

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Electra to her brother Orestes, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

“You take souls for vegetables…. The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Heinrich, Act 5, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Jupiter to Orestes, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

“in order to make himself thoroughly undesirable, he will speak.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(463).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“It is better; heavier, crueler. The mouth you wear for hell.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Inès to Estelle after she has applied lipstick, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)

“I have nothing but contempt for you idiotic chosen ones who have the heart to rejoice when there are the damned in Hell and the poor on earth; as for me, I am on the side of men and I will not leave it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 6, sc. 6
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“Generally speaking there is no irreducible taste or inclination. They all represent a certain appropriative choice of being. It is up to existential psychoanalysis to compare and classify them. Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental possibilities, and the value which haunts it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

“The live dead-man is dead as a producer and alive insofar as he consumes”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

139
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.”

Jean Paul Sartre

As quoted in Marianne Sinclair's !Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara (1968)

“For those who want ‘to change life”, ‘to reinvent love,’ God is nothing but a hindrance.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

500
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“You have stolen my face from me: you know it and I no longer do.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)

“Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6
Dirty Hands (1948)

“Jupiter: I am not your king, impudent larva? Who then has created you?
Orestes: You. But you should not have created me free.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 3
The Flies (1943)

“Man cannot will 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

Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)

“They are in bad faith — they are afraid — and fear, bad faith have an aroma that the gods find delicious. Yes, the gods like that, the pitiful souls.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

“Everything is both a trap and a display; the secret reality of the object is what the Other makes of it.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Critique of Dialectical Reason

Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960)

“As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all anymore. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words that are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. … I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday 3:00pm (9 February?)
Nausea (1938)

“I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Friday (2 February), concerning a card game
Nausea (1938)

“Your crystal? That’s silly. Whom do you think you are fooling? Come on, everyone knows that I threw the baby out of the window. The crystal is shattered on earth, and I do not care. I am no longer anything but a skin, and my skin does not belong to you.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Estelle to Inès, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)

“Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Adieu les monstres! Adieu les saints! Adieu l'orgueil! Il n'y a que des hommes.
Act 10, sc. 4
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“As for us, my little friend, we entered [the Communist Party] because we were tired of dying of hunger.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 3, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

“Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Act 1, sc. 5
Variant translation: Among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.
No Exit (1944)

“such mad confidence within despair.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
Original: (60).

“In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Jessica to her husband Hugo, Act 3, sc. 5
Dirty Hands (1948)

“The past is the luxury of proprietors.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad of tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexible order gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves…. I would like to hold them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stopping one, there would only remain in my 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.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

“Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 11, sc. 2
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never use it for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Hoederer to Hugo, Act 5, sc. 3
Dirty Hands (1948)

“My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think … and I can't prevent myself from thinking.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Ma pensée, c'est moi: voilà pourquoi je ne peux pas m'arrêter. J'existe parce que je pense … et je ne peux pas m'empêcher de penser.
Lundi ("Monday")
Nausea (1938)

“But when they have realized that it [society] rejects them forever, they themselves assume the ostracism of which they are victims so as not to leave the initiative to their oppressors”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(65-6).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Refusing the Nobel Prize, New York Times (22 October 1964)

“Each human reality is at the same time a direct project to metamorphose its own For-itself into an In-itself-For-itself, a project of the appropriation of the world as a totality of being-in-itself, in the form of a fundamental quality. Every human reality is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui, which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(280).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 3, sc. 6
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“I am a man, Jupiter, and each man must invent his own path.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Orestes, Act 3
The Flies (1943)

“I am condemned to be free.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Je suis condamné à être libre.
Part 4, chapter 1
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“Aegistheus, the kings have another secret…. Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the Gods can do nothing against that man. It is a matter for men to handle amongst themselves, and it is up to other men — and to them alone — to let him flee or to destroy him.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Jupiter, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

“All human activities are equivalent … and … all are on principle doomed to failure.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Conclusion, II
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Existentialism and Human Emotions (1957)