Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

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.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

She believed in nothing. Only her scepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Man can will nothing 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.

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

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.

Words are loaded pistols.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

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.

In love, one and one are one.

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

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