Quotes from book
Being and Nothingness

Name: Being and Nothingness
Author: Jean Paul Sartre

Jean Paul SartreOriginal title L'Être et le Néant, Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique (French, 1943)

Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology , sometimes published with the subtitle A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. In the book, Sartre develops a philosophical account in support of his existentialism, dealing with topics such as consciousness, perception, social philosophy, self-deception, the existence of "nothingness", psychoanalysis, and the question of free will.

“Existence is prior to essence.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 4, chapter 1
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Variant: Existence precedes and rules essence.

“Life is a useless passion.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Variant: Man is a useless passion.
Source: Being and Nothingness (1943)

“Nothingness haunts being.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 1, Chapter 1, III
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Nausea (1938)
Source: Being and Nothingness

“It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness

“Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

“The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

“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)

“It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness (1943), p. 237, 1998 edition

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 2
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“To eat is to appropriate by destruction.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 3: Being-For-Others
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“Man is always separated from what he is by all the breadth of the being which he is not. He makes himself known to himself from the other side of the world and he looks from the horizon toward himself to recover his inner being.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Being and Nothingness (1943)

“I am responsible for everything … except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 4, Chapter 1, III
Being and Nothingness (1943)
Context: 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.