Top 450 Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

152. “The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the consciousness that thinks.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

153. “When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

154. “The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

155. “I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

156. “Life gave me everything I asked If all I asked was not a great deal, that’s my problem!”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

157. “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

158. “Thing are bad! Things are very bad: I have it, the filth, the Nausea.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

159. “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

160. “Ideas come in pairs and they contradict one another; their opposition is the principal engine of reflection.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

161. “I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

162. “When one does nothing, one believes oneself responsible for everything.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

163. “One should commit no stupidity twice, the variety of choice is, in the end, large enough.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

164. “The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

165. “I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

166. “Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

167. “Man is the being whose project it is to be God.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

168. “To be responsible is to be the uncontested author of an event or thing.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

169. “Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

170. “You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

171. “A madman’s ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

172. “What’s done at night belongs to the night. In the daytime you don’t talk about it.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

173. “Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

174. “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

175. “I never could bear the idea of anyone’s expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

176. “It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

177. “Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

178. “It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

179. “Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

180. “Little flashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

181. “Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

182. “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

183. “People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

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

— Jean-Paul Sartre

185. “If you want to deserve Hell, you need only stay in bed. The world is iniquity; if you accept it, you are an accomplice, if you change it you are an executioner.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

186. “I have such a desire to sleep and am so much behind my sleep. A good night, one good night and all this nonsense will be swept away.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

187. “What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

188. “What is not possible is not to choose.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

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

— Jean-Paul Sartre

190. “When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

191. “My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

192. “The appearance of the other in the world corresponds therefore to a congealed sliding of the whole universe.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

193. “That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

194. “Time is too large, it can’t be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

195. “Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

196. “I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

197. “Two people can form a community by excluding a third.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

198. “Handing over a bank note is enough to make a bicycle belong to me, but my entire life is needed to realize this possession.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

199. “It is enough that one man hate another for hate to gain, little by little, all mankind.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

200. “The past is the luxury of proprietors.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre