Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations.

If you just take it down to bare facts, the reason for living is the reason you make it. I mean the brain was made to create.

Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.

Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

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.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

As a child, I wondered often, 'Why are we? What is the meaning of life?' These questions made me realize that life is what has meaning - not just individual lives, but all of our lives.

Man positively needs general ideas and convictions that will give a meaning to his life and enable him to find a place for himself in the universe.

life is meaningless unless you bring meaning to it; ... it is up to us to create our own existence. Unless you do something, unless you make something it's as though you aren't there.

My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity.

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life.

I don't know if I was put on this Earth for a purpose or not. But I'm fairly confident that I'll be taken off of it for one.

We do not what we ought; What we ought not, we do; And lean upon the thought That chance will bring us through; But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier powers.

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

I don't think any of us really knows why we're here. But I think we're supposed to believe we're here for a purpose.

By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.

How did I get into the world? Why was I not asked about it and why was I not informed of the rules and regulations but just thrust into the ranks as if I had been bought by a peddling shanghaier of human beings? How did I get involved in this big enterprise called actuality? Why should I be involved? Isn't it a matter of choice? And if I am compelled to be involved, where is the manager—I have something to say about this. Is there no manager? To whom shall I make my complaint?

I never asked to be born in the first place.

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life ... Life can be made meaningful in a threefold way: first, through what we give to life ... second, by what we take from the world ... third, through the stand we take toward a fate we no longer can change.