[E]very man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Existentialism is no mournful delectation but a humanist philosophy of action, effort, combat, and solidarity. Man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines say what this man is before he dies, or what mankind is before it has disappeared.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Existentialism's first move is to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

For many have but one resource to sustain them in their misery, and that is to think, “Circumstances have been against me, I was worthy to be something much better than I have been. I admit I have never had a great love or a great friendship; but that is because I never met a man or a woman who were worthy of it; if I have not written any very good books, it is because I had not the leisure to do so; or, if I have had no children to whom I could devote myself it is because I did not find the man I could have lived with. So there remains within me a wide range of abilities, inclinations and potentialities, unused but perfectly viable, which endow me with a worthiness that could never be inferred from the mere history of my actions.” But in reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving; there is no genius other than that which is expressed in works of art.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

...freedom only gives you something to be sorry for.

— Jean-Paul Sartre