If existence really does precede essence, there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature. In other words, there is no determinism, man is free, man is freedom. On the other hand, if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no excuses.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

The words I speak are too big for my mouth, they tear it; the load of destiny I bear is too heavy for my youth and has shattered it.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Faith, even when profound, is never complete. It has to be endlessly sustained or, at least, preserved from destruction.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

A work of art is only a page torn from a life. It expresses this life, of course, but it could have very well not expressed it. No matter, for everything has the same value, whether it be writing The Possessed or drinking a cup of coffee.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Love’s a grand solace, isn’t it, my friend? Deep and dark as sleep.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

You have to talk to make sure you’re alive.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Things are entirely what they appear to be and BEHIND THEM... there is nothing.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

I was neither a grandfather, nor a father, nor even a husband. I didn’t vote, I scarcely paid any taxes; I couldn’t lay claim to the rights of a tax-payer, nor to those of an elector, nor even to the humble right to honour which twenty years of obedience confer on an employee. My existence was beginning to cause me serious concern. Was I a mere figment of the imagination?

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Mighty king, come from so far, prepared by so many combinations, by so many vanished gestures. He disappears in turn, so that other combinations can be born, other gestures, attacks, counterattacks, turns of luck, a crowd of small adventures.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

J’ai voulu que les moments de ma vie se suivent et s’ordonnent comme ceux d’une vie qu’on se rappelle. Autant vaudrait tenter d’attraper le temps par la queue.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Dostoevsky said, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

And you, fathers and mothers, loving par-ents, lower your eyes humbly. They are there, your dead children, stretching their frail arms towards you, and all the happiness you denied them, all the tortures you inflicted, weigh like lead on their sad, childish, unforgiving hearts.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Those who hide their complete freedom from themselves out of a spirit of seriousness or by means of deterministic excuses, I shall call cowards; those who try to show that their existence was necessary, when it is the very contingency of man’s appearance on earth, I shall call stinkers. But cowards or stinkers can be judged only from a strictly unbiased point of view.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

We all wish we did not exist. It is a state where we have no choice. This is because when you have a choice comes responsibility and anxiety.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

The effect of any form of materialism is to treat all men – including oneself – as objects, which is to say as a set of predetermined reactions indistinguishable from the properties and phenomena that constitute, say, a table, a chair, or a stone. Our aim is exactly to establish the human kingdom as a set of values distinct from the material world.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

I marvel at these young people: drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If they are asked what they did yesterday, they aren’t embarrassed: they bring you up to date in a few words. If I were in their place, I’d fall over myself. It’s true that no one has bothered about how I spend my time for a long while. When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell something: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

The existentialist cannot accept that man can be helped by any sign on earth, for he will interpret the sign as he chooses.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

The existentialist portrays a coward as one who makes himself a coward by his actions, a hero who makes himself heroic.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

You might think that there’s some authority you could look for to answers, but all of the authorities you can think of are fake.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Every man ought to say to himself, “Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?

— Jean-Paul Sartre
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