Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.

The only basis for living is believing in life, loving it, and applying the whole force of one's intellect to know it better.

Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.

Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The meaning of life is life.

You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.

It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose.

If I were to adopt pure mechanism as a philosophy, there would be no way I could choose to be a scholar.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

The world is independent of my will.

We must be proud of not being needles and threads in the hands of fate as it sews the motley cloth of history.... We know that this cloth is not sewn without us.... And that is not all. We can change the pattern of the carpet.

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Now look at me! Take a good look! I was born and I knew I was alive and I knew what I wanted. What do you think is alive in me? Why do you think I'm alive? Because I have a stomach and eat and digest the food? Because I breathe and work and produce more food to digest? Or because I know what I want, and that something which knows how to want—isn't that life itself? And who—in this damned universe—who can tell me why I should live for anything but for that which I want?

Our lives are like these things I make. Turn 'em, build 'em, bake 'em in fire. That's what you've been, son. Baked and fired. But a pot don't have the right to choose whether he be for water, wine, or just left empty. You have, son. You have.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little.

We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask - and to answer - the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer.

Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.

There are two conflicting philosophies that I love: "Everything happens for a reason," as well as "you can change everything that you have control over."

Kierkegaard also said that truth is 'subjective'. By this he did not mean it doesn't matter what we think or believe. He meant that the really important truths are personal. Only these truths are 'true for me'.

Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.