Jean Paul Sartre Quotes

Everything has been figured out, except how to live. Every word has consequences. Every silence, too. If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company. When the rich wage war it's the poor who die. We make our own hell out of the people around us. Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you. It is only in our decisions that we are important. 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. We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and mute as stones, our very passivity, would be an act. To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while. Introspection is always retrospection. Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give a meaning. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing. The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are that is the fact. Before you come alive, life is nothing; it's up to you give it a meaning and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose. Being is. Being is in itself. Being is what it is. I'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language. Ah! Yes, I know: those who see merarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it. All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure. Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. Acting is a question of absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own experience. Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives. Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's kness. We are our choices. Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry. My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking. Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. I am a mere breath of air; a formless thought that thinks of you. In love, one and one are one. There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours. No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point. Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think. Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

Jean Paul Sartre

1905 - 1980