UPSC Express

Jean-Paul Satre Quotes

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.

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

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.

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

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

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

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

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

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

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

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

If literature isn’t everything, it’s not worth a single hour of someone’s trouble.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

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

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

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.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

We do not judge the people we love.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

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.

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

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

If I became a philosopher, if I have so keenly sought this fame for which I’m still waiting, it’s all been to seduce women basically.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

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

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

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

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

In love, one and one are one.

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.

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

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

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

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

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.

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

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.