40 Sartre phrases to better understand your thoughts

Doubt is the price of purity.

You have to have the courage to do like everyone else in order not to be like anyone else.

Man is nothing more than what he makes of himself: this is the first principle of existentialism.

That’s what life is: balancing yourself all the time between choices and consequences.

Man is doomed to be free

Man first exists, discovers himself, appears in the world; and that only then is defined.

In effect, I am an existent who learns his freedom through his actions.

The important thing is not what they make of us, but what we make of what others have made of us.

It is better to overcome ourselves than the world.

It is better to die by fire, in combat, than at home, by hunger.

Nobody heals themselves.

The shame: that passes when life is long.

Man is nothing but what he makes himself.

Helplessness and anguish go hand in hand.

Existence precedes and commands essence.

I exist, that’s all, and I find it sickening.

In love, one plus one equals one.

Man is by no means the sum of what he has, but the totality of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

The more sand trickled into the clock of our life, the more clearly we should see through the glass.

If you’re bored when you’re alone, it’s because you’re in bad company.

Beauty is a veiled contradiction.

When the rich make war, it’s always the poor who die.

As for despair, it is an extremely simple concept. It means that we can only count on what depends on our will or on the set of probabilities that make our action possible.

I can always choose, but I must know that if I don’t choose, I’m still choosing.

What is not terrible is not suffering or dying, but dying in vain.

Freedom is not doing what you want, but wanting what you do.

The only thing that matters is whether the invention that is made is done in the name of freedom.

There is no love but that which is built.

You’re half victim, half accomplice, like everyone else.

Hell is other people.

We don’t do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.

We never judge who we love.

A love, a career, a revolution: so many other things that start without knowing how they will end.

I would so much like to abandon myself, to stop being aware of my existence, to stop sleeping.

One man cannot be more of a man than others, because freedom is similarly infinite in each one.

Existence penetrates me from all sides, through the eyes, through the nose, through the mouth…

I was born to satisfy the great need I had for myself.

All men are afraid. Who is not afraid is not normal; it has nothing to do with courage.

When we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that man is responsible for his restricted individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.