Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

About Jean-Paul Sartre:

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism and phenomenology, and one of the leading figures in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism.
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I confused things with their names: that is belief.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

Jean-Paul Sartre

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted- Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sa...

Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.

Jean-Paul Sartre

In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious...

Jean-Paul Sartre

The claim to a national culture in the past does not only rehabilitate that nation and serve as a justification for the hope of a future national culture. In the sphere of psycho-affective equilibrium it is responsible for an important change in the ...

Jean-Paul Sartre

Colinialism hardly ever exploits the whole of a country. It contents itself with bringing to light the natrual resources, which it extracts, and exports to meet the needs of the mother country's industries, thereby allowing certain sectors of the col...

Jean-Paul Sartre

It is true that if care is taken to use only a language that it's understood by graduates in law and economics, you can easily prove that the masses have to be managed from above.

Jean-Paul Sartre

The business of obscuring language is a mask behind which stands the much greater business of plunder.

Jean-Paul Sartre

How come he cannot recognize his own cruelty now turned against him? How come he can't see his own savagery as a colonist in the savagery of these oppressed peasants who have absorbed it through every pore and for which they can find no cure? The ans...

Jean-Paul Sartre

Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

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.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

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

Jean-Paul Sartre

Author Bio

  • NameJean-Paul Sartre
  • DescriptionFrench existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic
  • AliasesJean-Paul Sartre; Jean Paul Sartre
  • BornJune 21, 1905
  • DiedApril 15, 1980
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPlaywright; Philosopher; Writer; Novelist; Screenwriter; Political Activist; Biographer; Literary Critic; Autobiographer
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature