Sartre Quotes

“Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....”

“Sartre turns love into a ‘battle between two hypnotists in a closed room’.”

“I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it.Jean-Paul Sartre, Words”

“Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines say what this man is before he dies, or what mankind is before it has disappeared.”

“There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.”

“My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them.”

“certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything anymore: 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.”

“Setting fire to the roofs, getting away with the loot, suiting herself. She studied modern philosophy, read Sartre on the side, smoked Gitanes, and cultivated a look of bored contempt. But inwardly, she was seething with unfocused excitement, and looking for someone to worship.”

“He takes a few dazed steps, the waiters turn out the lights and he slips into unconsciousness: when this man is lonely he sleeps.”

“Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.”