Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

My family, in a way, gives me a reference as to who I am as an individual, and my work gives me a reference as to who I am as a Homo sapiens. I think that's a very perfect match, in my view.

Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.

In one sense Brahman is known to every human being; he knows, "I am"; but man does not know himself as he is.

Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.

I don't have dreams. How can I say it? I myself am a dream.

A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.

How we come to be, and how we are what we are, is beyond any understanding. I have been obsessed by this, trying to understand the very nature of my existence.

I can explain my body and my brain, but there's something more. I can't explain my own existence - what makes me a unique human being.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.

Ego is the immediate dictate of human consciousness.

If you cannot render me a reason how I came hither, and what I am, I must go to those who will render me one. And if that craving be not satisfied by a rational theory of life, it will demand satisfaction from some magical theory;

I think, personally, it's our flaws that define us to us - or maybe it's just me.

We get older, and we get more wrinkles, but fundamentally, we stay the same... You have the same fears and doubts and concerns and dreams and passions and all those kinds of things, so I feel like you don't change as much as you think you do.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

I am not this body. I am in this body, and this is part of my incarnation and I honor it but that isn't who I am.

When I look for my existence I do not look for it in myself.

We are so defined by how people see us. We're a very materialistic culture. We're a very image-driven culture. What if that goes away and you are left with, God help us, what, indeed, is your essential self?

We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.

But possibly I am something more than I suppose myself to be.

No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.

One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.

Look directly into every mirror. Realize our reflection is the first sentence to a story, and our story starts: We were here.

The sight of one's own heart is degrading; people are not meant to look inward - that's why they've been given bodies, to hide their souls.