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Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes - Page 8

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There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence

There are two kinds of existentialist; first, those who are Christian...and on the other hand the atheistic existentialists, among whom...I class myself. What they have in common is that they think that existence precedes essence, or, if you prefer, that subjectivity must be the turning point.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Christian, Atheist, Thinking

Photographs are not ideas. They give us ideas.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Ideas, Giving, Photograph
Jean-Paul Sartre (2005). “Colonialism and Neocolonialism”, p.2, Routledge

This is the basis for the joy of love when there is joy; we feel that our existence is justified.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Joy, Justified, Existence
Jean-Paul Sartre (2002). “Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings”, p.235, Routledge

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Heart, Mean, Flames

I am responsible for everything... except my very responsibility.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Responsibility, Responsible

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Philosophical, Saint, Sixteen
"The Devil and the Good Lord". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 5, sc. 2, 1951.

Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Soul, Absence, Superb
"The Flies". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Orestes, Act 1, 1943.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Birthday, Philosophy, Class

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Responsibility, Men, Liberty

[M]an is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Believe, Passion, Men
Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “The Philosophy of Existentialism: Selected Essays”, p.31, Open Road Media

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Judging, Criminals, Faces
"The Flies". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, act 1, 1943.

Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Inevitable

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Death, Existence Of Life, Existentialism
Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr”, p.2, U of Minnesota Press

If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Life, Lying, Drinking
"The Devil and the Good Lord". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Act 10, sc. 2, 1951.

[Lost of the absolute] is in this sense that ''I no longer know what to do with my life" must be understood. Critics have been mistaken about the meaning of this phrase, seeing in it a cry of despair as in Simone de Beauvoir's "I have been cheated." When she uses this word it is to indicate that she claims from life an absolute which she cannot find there.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Despair, Phrases, Use

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Heads Or Tails, People, Going Away
"Nausea". Book by Jean-Paul Sartre, Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January, 1938.

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June

Jean-Paul Sartre
Summer, June, Lovely

Man must be invented each day

Jean-Paul Sartre
Inspiration, Men, Each Day

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Responsibility, Might, Existentialism
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

It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns...It goes, it goes ... and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Thinking, Example, Rumination

When I can't see myself in the mirror, I can't even feel myself, and I begin to wonder if I exist at all.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Mirrors, Wonder, Feels

One can ask why the I has to appear in the cogito {Descartes’ argument “I think therefore I am.}, since the cogito, if used rightly, is the awareness of pure consciousness, not directed at any fact or action. In fact the I is not necessary here, since it is never united directly to consciousness. One can even imagine a pure and self-aware consciousness which thinks of itself as impersonal spontaneity.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Thinking, Self, Facts

So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Believe, Order, Long

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

Jean-Paul Sartre
Suffering, Rhythm, Like Me
Jean-Paul Sartre (2013). “Nausea”, p.151, New Directions Publishing

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

Jean-Paul Sartre
Philosophy, Thinking, Complaining
Jean-Paul Sartre (2012). “The Philosophy of Existentialism: Selected Essays”, p.37, Open Road Media

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