We Have Only This Life to Live Quotes

“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, We Have Only This Life to Live: The Selected Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939-1975

“Only he who knows how to speak can be silent.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, We Have Only This Life to Live: The Selected Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939-1975

“What were you hoping, when you removed the gags that stopped up these black mouths? That they would sing your praises? Did you think, when the heads our fathers had ground into the dust had raised themselves up again, you would see adoration in their eyes? Here are black men standing, men looking at us, and I want you to feel, as I do, the shock of being seen. For the white man has, for three thousand years, enjoyed the privilege of seeing without being seen.

- Black Orpheus”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, We Have Only This Life to Live: The Selected Essays of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939-1975