Jerry Hall Quotes

Existence precedes and rules essence.

I liked Sartre's views but not his writing.

Europe, in legend, has always been the home of subtle philosophical discussion; America was the land of grubby pragmatism.

People used to think I was just a shouty comic but I was doing stuff about Sartre.

Find out who Sartre is.

I wouldn't reread Sartre today. Compared to everything I've read since, his fiction seems dated and has lost much of its value.

We're philosophers. We think, therefore we am.

Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

Nothing is never nothing. It's always something.

Existence is prior to essence.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one.

Nothingness haunts Being.

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.

Nothingness is the basis of everything.

Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat? Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat. Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats. Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.

Existentialists are monumentally and monotonously serious; they don't like to joke.

If there is existence, there must be non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time before that - when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or non-existence?

I should like to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche somewhere in a train or a steamer, and to spend the whole night talking to him. I consider his philosophy won't last long, however. It's more showy than convincing.

The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.

Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.

I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

In a strange room you must empty yourself for sleep. And before you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep, what are you. And when you are emptied for sleep you are not. And when you are filled with sleep, you never were. I don't know what I am. I don't know if I am or not.

No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.