Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre 1946

any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver.

When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.

If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts.

f values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards.

. In Kant, this universality goes so far that the wild man of the woods, man in the state of nature and the bourgeois are all contained in the same definition and have the same fundamental qualities. Here again, the essence of man precedes that historic existence which we confront in experience.

It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view.

there is no legislator but himself; that he himself, thus abandoned, must decide for himself; also because we show that it is not by turning back upon himself, but always by seeking, beyond himself, an aim which is one of liberation or of some particular realisation, that man can realize himself as truly human.

what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God.

any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver.