Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.

كانت حياتي كلها أمامي مغلقة كالحقيبة ومع ذلك فكل شيء بداخلها قد انتهى امره في لحظة، وكنت اريد ان اقتنع بأنها حياة جميلة ولكنني لم اوفق على هذا الحكم، كان مجرد صورة تخطيطية سريعة، لقد قضيت حياتي أصارع الأبدية..لم افهم شيئاً..لم انسى شيئاً..كان من الممكن ان انسى اشياء كثيرة.ــ الحائط

It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.

Time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

You're lucky. I'm always conscious of myself — in my mind. Painfully conscious.

There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

The Nausea is not inside me: I feel it out there in the wall, in the suspenders, everywhere around me. It makes itself one with the café, I am the one who is within it.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

I've lived the life of a man without teeth, he thought about it. A life of a man without teeth. I've never bitten, I've been waiting, keeping myself for later - and now I've just ascertained that I don't have teeth anymore.

So it comes to this; one doesn’t need rest. Why bother about sleep if one isn’t sleepy? That stands to reason, doesn’t it? Wait a minute, there’s a snag somewhere; something disagreeable. Why, now, should it be disagreeable? …Ah, I see; it’s life without a break.

I am not asking for sensational revelations, but I would like to sense the meaning of that minute, to feel it's urgency...