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Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. [It is a matter of choice, not chance.] Such is the first principle of existentialism.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Jean-Paul Sartre
Age: 74 †
Born: 1905
Born: January 1
Died: 1980
Died: January 1
Author
Biographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Existentialist
Intellectual
Literary Critic
Meteorologist
Novelist
Ontologist
Opinion Journalist
Paris
France
Jean Paul Sartre
J.P. Sartre
Sarutoru
Rangbao'er Sate
Jacques Guillemin
Sate
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre
J.-P. Sartre
Sartre
Makes
Else
Firsts
Existentialism
Nothing
Principle
Matter
Choice
First
Principles
Men
Choices
Chance

More quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

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Thrown into the atmosphere of action [in 1954], I suddenly understood the kind of neurosis that dominated all my previous work. I had not been able to recognize it before: I was inside. Simone de Beauvoir had guessed these reasons before I did.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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The past is the luxury of proprietors.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati's.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly leave it on earth: die light.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I have nothing but contempt for you idiotic chosen ones who have the heart to rejoice when there are the damned in Hell and the poor on earth as for me, I am on the side of men and I will not leave it.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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First all men must be able to become men by the improvement of their conditions of existence, so that a universal morality can be created. If I begin by saying to them: Thou shalt not lie, there is no longer any possibility of political action. What matters first is the liberation of man.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain’s children: thy will be done. You have allowed men’s hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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What I see is teeming cohesion, contained dispersal... For him, to sculpt is to take the fat off space.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Words There is no good father, that's the rule. Don't lay the blame on men but on the bond of paternity, which is rotten. To beget children, nothing better to have them, what iniquity!
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Man's existence precedes his essence
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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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.
Jean-Paul Sartre