Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Man is condemned to be free.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Existence is prior to essence.

Man's existence precedes his essence

Existence precedes and rules essence.

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

I am, therefore I'll think.

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live.

Life without Freedom is like a body without a soul, and Freedom without Thought is like a confused spirit. . . . Life, Freedom and Thought are three-in-one, and are everlasting and shall never pass away.

Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

We must believe in free will, we have no choice.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Philosophically I am, or at least have been, a follower of Sartre. I am very interested in the choices we make, or don't make, in life-defining matters. That moment of 'angst' and its consequences can be such a cruel thing.

I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre.

There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author.

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

I drink therefore I am.

In 1965, I was teaching a seminar on freedom when I told my students that the ultimate freedom lay in casting a dice to decide what to do. They were so shocked and fascinated that I knew I had to write the book.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Philosophy, most broadly viewed, is the critical survey of existence from the standpoint of value.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

If there is such a thing as freedom, then there is no fate.