841 Quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

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.

Aujourd'hui, je leur donne raison : ils avaient tout accepté de notre condition, même l'inquiétude ; j'avais choisi d'être rassuré ; et c'était bien vrai, au fond, que je me croyais immortel : je m'étais tué d'avance parce que les défunts sont seuls à jouir de l'immortalité.

So you realized that there were always women in tears, or a red-headed man, or something else to spoil your effects?""Yes, naturally.

...freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.

Crazy as a loon"—and Doctor Roge vaguely recalls other crazy loons, not remembering any one of them in particular. Now, nothing M. Achille can do will surprise us: because he's a crazy loon!

She is wearing her black dress. She isn’t crying, but she never did cry, anyhow. It’s a bright sunny day and she’s like a black shadow creeping down the empty street.

What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself. If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be.

Nothingness haunts Being.