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Jean-Paul Sartre

The French existentialist philosopher, John-Paul Sartre was a leading figure in 20th century philosophy and has been called “the most written about twentieth-century author.” He was a dramatist, screenwriter, novelist and critic and the existentialism he formulated and popularized is profoundly original. Its popularity reached a peak in the forties, and his theoretical writings as well as his novels and plays constitute one of the main inspirational sources of modern literature.

Sartre was captured by the Nazis while serving as a French army meteorologist.  While a prisoner of war for a one-year duration, he wrote his famous work, Being And Nothingness. After being released, he participated actively in the French resistance to German occupation until the liberation Europe. Because of his experience, Sartre recognized a connection between the principles of existentialism and the more practical concerns of social and political struggle.

Sartre’s personal and professional life was greatly enriched by his long-term collaboration with Simone de Beauvoir, the noted writer and feminist. The two, it is documented, became inseparable and lifelong companions, initiating a romantic relationship although they were not monogamous.

Despite declining the Nobel Prize for literature in 1964, due to his belief that accepting honors aligned a writer to the institution granting the award, Sartre has been recognized as one of the most respected leaders of post-World War II French culture and literature.

 
“A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.”

“Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”

“We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.”

“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.”

“We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.”

               

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

“Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.”

“One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.”

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

“Only the guy who isn’t rowing has time to rock the boat.”

“In love, one and one are one.”

“A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.”

“Conflict is the original meaning of being-for-others.”

“It’s the well-behaved children ... that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on they make society pay dearly.”

“Hell is other people.”

“God is absence. God is the solitude of man.”

“That God does not exist, I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre  (1905-1980)

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