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Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes - Page 12

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Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Better a good journalist than a poor assassin.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Assassins, Poor, Good Journalism
Jean Paul Sartre (1949). “Three Plays: Tr. from the French by Lionel Abel”

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my mouth. I swallow. It slides down my throat, it caresses me — and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Sweet, Lying, Thinking
"Being and Nothingness".

Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Mother, Moving, Thinking
"The Flies". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 2, 1943.

Everything is gratuitous, this garden, this city and myself. When you suddenly realize it, it makes you feel sick and everything begins to drift . . . that's nausea.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Garden, Cities, Sick

To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Evil, Be Good, Values
Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.165, Open Road Media

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

Jean-Paul Sartre
Filled Up, Existentialism, Plunge
Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.30, New Directions Publishing

We will freedom for freedom’s sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Commitment, Liberty, Doe
"Existentialism Is a Humanism". Lecture, 1946.

Like morality, literature needs to be universal. So that the writer must put himself on the side of the majority, of the two billion starving, if he wishes to be able to speak to all and be read by all. Failing that, he is at the service of a privileged class and, like it, an exploiter.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Class, Two, Wish

Philosophy appears to some people as a homogenous milieu: there thoughts are born and die, there systems are built, and there, in turn, they collapse. Others take Philosophy for a specific attitude which we can freely adopt at will. Still others see it as a determined segment of culture. In our view Philosophy does not exist.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Attitude, Philosophy, Views
Jean Paul Sartre (1963). “The Problem of Method”

Is there really nothing, nothing left of me?

Jean-Paul Sartre
Left
Jean Anouilh, Ugo Betti, Jean-Paul Sartre (1958). “Three European plays: Ring round the moon [by] Jean Anouilh, The queen and the rebels [by] Ugo Betti, In camera [by] Jean-Paul Sartre”

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Lying, Mean, Class
"Dirty Hands". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, act 5, sc. 3, 1948.

Un homme n'est rien d'autre qu'une se rie d'entreprises. A man is no other than a series of undertakings.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Men, Series, Undertakings

You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Believe, Men, Drawing
"Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara". Book by Marianne Sinclair, 1968.

That is exactly the writer's problem. What does literature stand for in a hungry world?

Jean-Paul Sartre
Literature, World, Doe

The universe remains dark. We are animals struck by catastrophe.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Dark, Animal, Catastrophe

I needed to justify my existence, and I had made an absolute of literature. It took me thirty years to get rid of this state of mind.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Years, Mind, Literature

If I relegate impossible Salvation to the prop room, what remains? A whole man, composed of all men and as good as all of them and no better than any.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Men, Rooms, Impossible
Jean-Paul Sartre (1978). “Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays”

Torture is senseless violence, born in fear... torture costs human lives but does not save them. We would almost be too lucky if these crimes were the work of savages: the truth is that torture makes torturers.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Doe, Savages, Lucky
"A Victory" by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1958.

I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me, and I have followed the source of rivers towards their source or plunged into forests, always making for other cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and I could never turn back any more than a record can spin in reverse. And all that was leading me where ? To this very moment.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Men, Sea, Cities

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Ifs
Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.12, Open Road Media

I know only one Church: it is the society of men.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Men, Church, Knows
"The Devil and the Good Lord". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 1, 1951.

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Fate, Principles, Action
Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Essays in Aesthetics”, p.13, Open Road Media

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Mistake, People, Together
"No Exit". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 1, sc. 5, 1944.

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Philosophical, Literature, Trouble
"Barthes: Selected Writings". Book edited by Susan Sontag, introduction "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes", 1982.

Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Tree, Criticism, Together

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