Top 33 Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.

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.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

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

Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complimentary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

Hell is other people.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total… because it may well involve the whole world.

Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

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.

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.

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.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.