Jean-Paul Sartre

“Only he who knows how to speak can be silent.”

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

“It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.”

“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.”

“The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.”

“People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea”

“Commitment is an act, not a word.”

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

“Man is free rather than man is freedom.”

“Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.”

“Existence precedes and rules essence.”

“He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.”

“My odd feelings of the other week seem to me quite ridiculous today: I can no longer enter into them.”

“But no: he was empty, he was confronted by a vast anger, a desperate anger, he saw it and could almost have touched it. But it was inert - if it were to live and find expression and suffer, he must lend it his own body. It was other people's anger. "Swine!" He clenched his fists, he strode along, but nothing came, the anger remained external to himself.”

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

“What sort of adventures?' I asked him, astonished. ‘All sorts, Monsieur. Getting on the wrong train. Stopping in an unknown city. Losing your briefcase, being arrested by mistake, spending the night in prison. Monsieur, I believe the word adventure could be defined: an event out of the ordinary without being necessarily extraordinary.”

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

“In football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team.”

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

“Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.”