Top 450 Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes (2023 Update)
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451. “Suddenly they existed, then suddenly they existed no longer: existence is without memory; of the vanished it retains nothing – not even a memory. Existence everywhere, infinitely, in excess, for ever and everywhere; existence – which is limited only by existence.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

452. “Before beginning this treatise, he wanted the advice of The Baboon, his philosophy prof. “Excuse me, sir,” he said at the end of a class, “could anyone claim that we don’t exist?” The Baboon said no. “Goghito,” he said, “ergo zum. You exist because you doubt your existence.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

453. “He raised himself on his hands and looked at Irene’s face: the nudity of that feminine body had risen into her face, the body had reabsorbed it, as nature reabsorbs forsaken gardens.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

454. “I scraped my heel against this black claw: I wanted to peel off some of the bark. For no reason at all, out of defiance, to make the bare pink appear absurd on the tanned leather: to play with the absurdity of the world. But, when I drew my heel back, I saw that the bark was still black.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

455. “Atheistic existentialism, which I represent, is more coherent. It states that if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger says, human reality.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

456. “A little more and I would have fallen into the mirror trap. I avoided it, but only to fall into the window trap: with nothing to do, my arms dangling, I go over to the window.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

457. “But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

458. “You didn’t succeed. Well, what of that? There’s nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution’s not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There’s work to be done, that’s all. And you must do what you’re cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It’s the work in which you can best succeed.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

459. “Dostoevsky said, “If God didn’t exist, everything would be possible.” That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can’t start making excuses for himself.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

460. “Everything looks so much alike that you wonder how people got the idea of inventing names, to make distinctions.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

461. “He yawned; he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his youth. Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism – all the aids whereby a man may savor, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life... ‘I have attained the age of reason.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

462. “I felt that the success of the enterprise was in my hands: the moment had an obscure meaning which had to be trimmed and perfected; certain motions had to be made, certain words spoken: I staggered under the weight of my responsibility.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

463. “Faith, even when profound, is never complete. It has to be endlessly sustained or, at least, preserved from destruction.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

464. “I have never before had such a strong feeling that I was devoid of secret dimensions, confined within the limits of my body, from which airy thoughts float up like bubbles. I build memories with my present self. I am cast out, forsaken in the present: I vainly try to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

465. “If I were ever to go on a trip, I think I should make written notes of the slightest traits of my character before leaving, so that when I returned I would be able to compare what I was and what I had become.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

466. “I glance around the room. What a comedy! All these people sitting there, looking serious, eating. No, they aren’t eating: they are recuperating in order to successfully finish their tasks. Each one of them has his little personal difficulty which keeps him from noticing that he exists; there isn’t one of them who doesn’t believe himself indispensable to something or someone.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

467. “She is dearer to me than life. But her suffering comes from within, and only she can rid herself of it. For she is free.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

468. “I’m not obstinate, I’m highly strung: I don’t know how to let myself go. I must always think of what is happening to me – it’s a form of self-protection.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

469. “But this richness was lost in confusion and finally was no more because it was too much.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

470. “And you, fathers and mothers, loving par-ents, lower your eyes humbly. They are there, your dead children, stretching their frail arms towards you, and all the happiness you denied them, all the tortures you inflicted, weigh like lead on their sad, childish, unforgiving hearts.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

471. “Man lives in the midst of images. Literature offers him a critical image of himself.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

472. “I am never any one of my attitudes, any one of my actions.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

473. “What makes or breaks a man is not what people think of him, but what he thinks of himself.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

474. “Houses were never sanctuaries. The Gestapo often conducted their arrests between midnight and five in the morning. It appeared that at any instant the door could open, allowing a cold breath of night air to blow in, and three friendly Germans with revolvers.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

475. “J’ai voulu que les moments de ma vie se suivent et s’ordonnent comme ceux d’une vie qu’on se rappelle. Autant vaudrait tenter d’attraper le temps par la queue.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

476. “All these objects... how can I explain? They inconvenienced me; I would have liked the to exist less strongly, more dryly, in a more abstract way, with more reserve.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

477. “The effect of any form of materialism is to treat all men – including oneself – as objects, which is to say as a set of predetermined reactions indistinguishable from the properties and phenomena that constitute, say, a table, a chair, or a stone. Our aim is exactly to establish the human kingdom as a set of values distinct from the material world.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

478. “Love’s a grand solace, isn’t it, my friend? Deep and dark as sleep.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

479. “Finally, it is worth mentioning, in the interest of thoroughness, that the defeat exasperated the conflict between generations. For four years the combatants of 1914 reproached those of 1940 for having lost the war, and those of 1940, in reply, accused their elders of having lost the peace.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

480. “I marvel at these young people: drinking their coffee, they tell clear, plausible stories. If they are asked what they did yesterday, they aren’t embarrassed: they bring you up to date in a few words. If I were in their place, I’d fall over myself. It’s true that no one has bothered about how I spend my time for a long while. When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell something: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

481. “Roquentin wonders if he could do the same as the man who wrote the tune. Not in music, but in the realm of art. Not a history book, because that is about what has existed, and existence is pointless, is not necessary.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

482. “You have to talk to make sure you’re alive.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

483. “An existant can never justify the existence of another existant.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

484. “On this Earth that bleeds, all joy is obscene, and all happy men must live alone.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

485. “Things are entirely what they appear to be and BEHIND THEM... there is nothing.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

486. “The words I speak are too big for my mouth, they tear it; the load of destiny I bear is too heavy for my youth and has shattered it.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

487. “There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre