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Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes - Page 14

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All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Responsibility, Views, Doubt

What's done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don't talk about it.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Night, Done, Daytime
Jean Paul Sartre (1949). “Three Plays”, New York : Knopf

Many young people today do not concern themselves with style. They think that what one says should be said simply and that is all. For me, style - which does not exclude simplicity, quite the opposite - is above all a way of saying three or four things in one. There is the simple sentence, with its immediate meaning, and then at the same time, below this immediate meaning, other meanings are organized. If one is not capable of giving language this plurality of meaning, then it is not worth the trouble to write.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Writing, Simple, Thinking
Jean-Paul Sartre (1978). “Sartre in the Seventies: Interviews and Essays”

Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Men, Wizards, World
Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “The Emotions: Outline of a Theory”, p.34, Open Road Media

I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Party, Men, Practice
"Dirty Hands". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 5, sc. 3, 1948.

I had dreamed my life for nearly fifty years (I am about to be fifty-nine). But, you see, there are two tones in Les Mats: the echo of this condemnation and a mitigation of that severity.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Two, Echoes, Years

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Truth, Opposites, Stories
"La Nausée (Nausea)". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1949.

Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Ignorance, Hands, Circles
"Nausea". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938.

If I did not publish this autobiography [Les Mots] sooner and in its most radical form, it is because I considered it exaggerated.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Form, Radical, Autobiography

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Travel, Adventure, Funny Travel
"Nausea". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, 1938.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

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

I am not recommending "popular" literature which aims at the lowest.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Literature, Aim, Popular Literature

I was a neophyte in another world [in 1954].

Jean-Paul Sartre
World, Another World

If a Jew is fascinated by Christians it is not because of their virtues, which he values little, but because they represent anonymity, humanity without race.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Christian, Race, Humanity

it was odd, he thought, that a man could hate himself as though he were someone else.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Hate, Men, Odd

When one loves animals and children too much, one loves them against human beings.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Children, Animal, Too Much

The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose, not his individuality, but his person in the complex society that conditions and supports him.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Support, Individuality, Depth

Freedom is existence, and in it existence precedes essence.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Essence, Existence
Jean-Paul Sartre, Hazel Estella Barnes (1992). “Being and Nothingness”, p.725, Simon and Schuster

Your scare me rather. My reflection in the glass never did that; of course, I knew it so well. Like something I had tamed...I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Reflection, Glasses, Heaven
Jean Paul Sartre (1955). “No exit, and three other plays”, Vintage

A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Mean, Political, Social
New York Times, October 22, 1964.

On my way to the office in the morning, there are, in front of me, behind me, other men going to their jobs. I see them; if I dared, I would smile at them. I think to myself that I am a socialist, that they are the purpose of my life, of my efforts and that they do not know it yet.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Morning, Jobs, Men

I have seen children dying of hunger. Over against a dying child La Nausee cannot act as a counterweight.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Children, Dying, Hunger

What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never useit for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Party, Mean, Power

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Singing, Suffering, Sorrow
Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

Men equally honest, equally devoted to their fatherland, are momentarily separated by different conceptions of their duty.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Men, Differences, Different
Jean Paul Sartre (1955). “No exit, and three other plays”, Vintage

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