Quotes About Freedom

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

He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end.

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

She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

An individual chooses and makes himself.

Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.

J'existe, c'est tout.

There is no human nature, since there is no god to conceive it.

man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, in other respect is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. The Existentialist does not believe in the power of passion. He will never agree that a sweeping passion is a ravaging torrent which fatally leads a man to certain acts and is therefore an excuse. He thinks that man is responsible for his passion.

I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of and the value of it is nothing else but the sense that you choose.

We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

Where shall I keep mine? You don't put your past in your pocket; you have to have a house. I have only my body: a man entirely alone, with his lonely body, cannot indulge in memories; they pass through him. I shouldn't complain: all I wanted was to be free.

All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.

know very well that I don't want to do anything: to do something is to create existence—and there's quite enough existence as it is.

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

If I didn't try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing.

I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death.

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

Let it crumble! Let the rocks revile me and flowers wilt at my coming. Your whole universe is not enough to prove me wrong. You are the king of gods, king of stones and stars, king of the waves of the sea. But you are not the king of man.

Freedom is what we do with what is done to us

I must be without remorse or regrets as I am without excuse; for from the instant of my upsurge into being, I carry the weight of the world by myself alone without anything or any person being able to lighten it.

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes?

The plight of modern man is that he is condemmed to be free.