Jean-Paul Sartre
Because the Nazi venom worked its way even into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest; because an all-powerful police sought to force us into silence every word became as precious as a declaration of principle; because we were persecuted, each of our gestures carried the weight of a commitment.Collection: Powerful
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Heart
Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.Collection: Nausea
Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.Collection: Soul
A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form.Collection: Honesty
There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.Collection: Fear
Perhaps its inevitable, perhaps one has to choose between being nothing at all and impersonating what one is.Collection: Inevitable
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.Collection: Thinking
At times discreetly, at times disgustingly, I yielded to the most fatal temptation whenever I could no longer bear it: as a result of impatience, Orpheus lost Eurydice; as a result of impatience, I lost myself.Collection: Temptation
I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.Collection: Nice
In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.Collection: Men
For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion.Collection: Mind
God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.Collection: Men
It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential significance of these foods.Collection: Oysters
Heroism is not to be won at the point of a pen.Collection: Heroism
Remember, Orestes: you were part of my herd, you grazed in the fields along with my sheep. Your liberty is nothing but a mange eating away at you, it is nothing but an exile.Collection: Sheep
The painful secret of gods and kings is that men are free, Aegistheus. You know it and they do not.Collection: Kings
I consider Les Nourritures Terrestres as a frightening book: "Look for God in no other place than everywhere." Go and tell that to a workman, an engineer!Collection: Book
There is no book of mine that I reject. That does not mean that I find them good.Collection: Book
A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out.Collection: Reflection
Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.Collection: Fall
It is not right, my fellow-countrymen, you who know very well all the crimes committed in our name. It's not at all right that you do not breathe a word about them to anyone, not even to your own soul, for fear of having to stand in judgment of yourself. I am willing to believe that at the beginning you did not realize what was happening; later, you doubted whether such things could be true; but now you know, and still you hold your tongues.Collection: Believe
Man is always a wizard to man, and the social world is at first magical.Collection: Men
Life is a useless passion.Collection: Passion
When my relations with the Communist Party gave me the necessary perspective I decided to write my autobiography. I wanted to show how a man can pass from literature held sacred to action which nevertheless remains that of an intellectual.Collection: Party
Therefore, in the nature of this will for freedom, which freedom itself implies, I may pass judgement on those who seek to hide from themselves the complete arbitrariness and the complete freedom of their existence.Collection: Judgement
I was a neophyte in another world [in 1954].Collection: World
I was escaping from Nature and at last becoming myself, that Other whom I was aspiring to be in the eyes of others.Collection: Nature
I believe, I desire, that social and economic ills may be remedied.Collection: Believe
Il n'y a pas d'autre univers qu'un univers humain, l'univers de la subjectivite humaine. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity.Collection: Subjectivity
A human being who wakened in the morning with a queesy stomach, with fifteen hours to kill before next bedtime, had not much use for freedom.Collection: Morning
I considered calmly that I was born to write.Collection: Writing
Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a "talent;" my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith.Collection: Happiness
You are -- your life, and nothing else.Collection: No Exit
One should commit no stupidity twice, the variety of choice is, in the end, large enough.Collection: Choices
What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.Collection: Mean
I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.Collection: Sleep
All I can do is make the best of what I am, become accustomed to it, evaluate the possibilities, and take advantage of them the best I can.Collection: Possibility
Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.Collection: Philosophy
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.Collection: Imagination
It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?Collection: Body
He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.Collection: Giving Up
Genius is what a man invents when he is looking for a way out.Collection: Men
The aim of language...is to communicate...to impart to others the results one has obtained...As I talk, I reveal the situation...I reveal it to myself and to others in order to change it.Collection: Order
When the rich [and politically powerful] make war, it's the poor [and politically weak] who die.Collection: Powerful
Hell is other people at breakfast.Collection: Food
I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.Collection: Humble