Jean Paul Sartre.

Jean Paul Charles Aymard Sartre

Jean Paul Sartre — Activist

Born 21 Jun 1905 Paris, France

Died 15 Apr 1980 Paris, France

Citizenship France

Would Be 121 yr If Living

14 min read

Reading time

2,696

Words

Mar 30, 2026

Published

23

Film credits

120

Books

5

Awards

TL;DR

Jean Paul Sartre, French existentialist philosopher and writer, was born in Paris on June 21, 1905. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 but turned it down. His seminal work ‘Nausea’ 1938 and play ‘No Exit’ 1944 defined existentialism. Sartre died of lung cancer on April 15, 1980, at age 74.

Identity & family.

KIN · 2

Names, aliases, and relatives of Jean Paul Sartre — birth name, kin, and personal ties.

Birth Name Jean Paul Charles Aymard Sartre

Aliases JP.Sartre, J.P. Sartre

Parents: Anne Marie Schweitzer Jean Baptiste Sartre

At a glance.

STATS

Jean Paul Sartre by the numbers — life, work, and family.

74 Years lived

23 Film credits

120 Books

5 Awards

Who was Jean Paul Sartre?

BIOGRAPHY

Jean Paul Sartre — early life, career, personal life, and legacy.

Early life

His father died when Sartre was a year old, and his grandfather Charles Schweitzer raised him in Meudon, introducing him to mathematics and classical literature. Sartre was born in Paris on June 21, 1905, to Jean Baptiste Sartre, a naval officer, and Anne Marie Schweitzer, cousin of Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer. After his mother remarried in 1917, Sartre suffered under his controlling stepfather, an experience that fueled his lifelong rebellion against authority. He attended Lycee Montaigne, Lycee Henri IV, Lycee Louis-le-Grand, and later the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Paris, where he studied philosophy under the influence of Henri Bergson, William James, Kant, Nietzsche, Husserl, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger.

Career

In 1938, Sartre published Nausea, the canonical existentialist novel that explored the absurdity of existence. During World War II, he was drafted in 1939, captured by the Germans in 1940, and imprisoned until he escaped in March 1941. While a POW, he wrote the play Bariona and began Being and Nothingness, which he completed and published in 1943. His play No Exit premiered in May 1944, famously declaring Hell is other people. In 1945, he co-founded the leftist journal Les Temps Modernes. He wrote Reflections on the Jewish Question after the liberation of Paris, and in 1964 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he refused. Sartre also scripted John Huston’s film Freud: The Secret Passion but withdrew his name.

Personal life

Sartre’s lifelong partner was Simone de Beauvoir, whom he met at the Sorbonne and who turned down his marriage proposal in 1932. They formed an open family that included students like Olga Kozakiewich, Nathalie Sorokine, and Jacques-Laurent Bost, living together in Paris during the Nazi occupation. In 1962, Sartre adopted a Jewish musician, Arlette El Kaim, and later took her to Israel in 1976. He lived modestly with Beauvoir on Rue Bonaparte in Montparnasse. Sartre used psychotropic drugs to break the bones in his head and think more expansively, and he was a heavy drinker, which contributed to his health decline.

Legacy

Sartre’s existentialist philosophy influenced the beatnik generation and beyond. His works, including Nausea and No Exit, remain staples of philosophical literature. He denounced Soviet labor camps in 1950 and supported Algerian independence despite attacks on his home. He presided over the Bertrand Russell International War Crimes Tribunal in 1967. Sartre’s refusal of the Nobel Prize underscored his anti-establishment stance. He died of lung cancer on April 15, 1980, and was buried in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris, where 50,000 people attended his funeral.

Filmography.

FILMS · 23

The complete filmography of Jean Paul Sartre — every film, TV show, and documentary credit, ranked by popularity.

TV

Les Rendez-vous Du Dimanche

1975
TV

Apostrophes

1975
TV

Around the World with Orson Welles

1955
TV

The Century of Icons

2022
TV

At War for Algeria

2022
Movie

The Century Is Fifty

1950
Movie

Life Begins Tomorrow

1950
Movie

Disorder

1950
Movie

Hôtel La Louisiane

2015
Movie

With André Gide

1952
Movie

The Padilla Affair

2023
Movie

Oscar Niemeyer: Life Is a Breath of Air

2007
Movie

Ernesto Che Guevara – Uomo, Compagno, Amico

1995
Movie

Mario Y Los Perros

2019

Showing 14 of 23 View all 23 films

Awards & honors.

AWARDS · 5

Every award, honor, and recognition received by Jean Paul Sartre — Grammys, hall-of-fame inductions, civic honors, lifetime achievements.

Nobel Prize in Literature
Eugène Dabit populist novel award
Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Grand Prize for the Best Novels of the Half-Century
Toynbee Prize

Bibliography.

BOOKS · 120

Jean Paul Sartre's bibliography — every authored, edited, and co-written book, ranked by edition count.

Amazon

Les Mains Sales

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Sursis

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Iron in the Soul

by Jean-Paul Sartre et al.
Amazon

No Exit (and Three Other Plays)

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Le Mur

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Words

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Nekrassov: a Farce in Eight Scenes

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Qu'est-ce Que La Littérature?

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Critique De La Raison Dialectique

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Séquestrés D'Altona

by Jean-Paul Sartre et al.
Amazon

Search for a Method

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Essays in Aesthetics

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Saint Genet

by Jean-Paul Sartre
Amazon

Réflexions Sur La Question Juive

by Jean-Paul Sartre

Showing 14 of 120 View all 120 books

Notable quotes.

QUOTES · 27

A wall of memorable lines from Jean Paul Sartre — lyrics, interviews, and off-the-cuff remarks captured over a lifetime.

Life Begins on the Other Side of Despair.
Hell Is Other People.
You Know How Much I Admire Che Guevara. in Fact, I Believe That the Man Was Not Only an Intellectual but Also the Most Complete Human Being of Our Age: as a Fighter and as a Man, as a Theoretician Who Was Able to Further the Cause of Revolution by Drawing His Theories from His Personal Experience in Battle.
I Hate Victims Who Respect Their Executioners.
Our Responsibility Is Much Greater Than We Might Have Supposed, Because It Involves All Mankind.
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.
Fascism Is Not Defined by the Number of Its Victims, but by the Way It Kills Them.
I Exist. It Is Soft, so Soft, so Slow. and Light: It Seems as Though It Suspends in the Air. It Moves.
My Thought Is Me: That’s Why I Can’t Stop. I Exist Because I Think … and I Can’t Prevent Myself from Thinking.
People Who Live in Society Have Learned How to See Themselves in Mirrors as They Appear to Their Friends. I Have No Friends. Is That Why My Flesh Is so Naked?
Three O’clock Is Always Too Late or Too Early for Anything You Want to Do.
Who Can Exhaust a Man? Who Knows a Man’s Resources?
You Know, It’s Quite a Job Starting to Love Somebody. You Have to Have Energy, Generosity, Blindness. There Is Even a Moment, in the Very Beginning, When You Have to Jump Across a Precipice: If You Think About It You Don’t Do It.
Do Not Judge the Gods, Young Man, They Have Painful Secrets.
The Painful Secret of Gods and Kings; It Is That Men Are Free.
I Construct My Memories with My Present. I Am Lost, Abandoned in the Present. I Try in Vain to Rejoin the Past: I Cannot Escape.
A Family Man Is Never a Real Family Man. an Assassin Is Never Entirely Assassin. They Play a Role, You Understand. While a Dead Man, He Is Really Dead. to Be or Not to Be, Right?
I Respect Orders but I Respect Myself Too and I Do Not Obey Foolish Rules Made Especially to Humiliate Me.
I Am Mean: That Means That I Need the Suffering of Others to Exist. a Flame. a Flame in Their Hearts. When I Am All Alone, I Am Extinguished.
With Despair, True Optimism Begins: the Optimism of the Man Who Expects Nothing, Who Knows He Has No Rights and Nothing Coming to Him, Who Rejoices in Counting on Himself Alone and in Acting Alone for the Good of All.
One Always Dies Too Soon or Too Late. and Yet, Life Is There, Finished: the Line Is Drawn, and It Must All Be Added Up. You Are Nothing Other Than Your Life.
The Best Work Is Not What Is Most Difficult for You; It Is What You Do Best.
The World Is Iniquity; If You Accept It, You Are an Accomplice, If You Change It You Are an Executioner.
I Divide Men into Three Categories: Those Who Have a Lot of Money, Those Who Have None at All and Those Who Have a Little. the First Want to Keep What They Have: Their Interest Is to Maintain Order. the Second Want to Take What They Do Not Have: Their Interest Is to Destroy the Existing Order and to Establish One Which Is Profitable to Them. They Each Are Realist, People with Whom One Can Agree. the Third Group Want to Overthrow the Social Order to Take What They Do Not Have, While Still Preserving It so That No One Takes Away What They Have. Thus, They Preserve in Fact What They Destroy in Theory, or They Destroy in Fact What They Seem to Preserve. Those Are the Idealists.
One Cannot Become a Saint When One Works Sixteen Hours a Day.
If You Are Not Already Dead, Forgive. Rancor Is Heavy, It Is Worldly; Leave It on Earth: Die Light.
I Do Not Believe in God; His Existence Has Been Disproved by Science. but in the Concentration Camp, I Learned to Believe in Men.

Did you know?

FACTS · 10

Little-known facts about Jean Paul Sartre — origins, oddities, and behind-the-scenes details from a public life.

In 2018, his play Nekrassov was presented for the first time in Greece at the Apo Michanis Theatro in Athens, in a critically praised production by THEAMA, an inclusive theatre company composed of disabled and non-disabled actors. The production was directed by Vassilis Oikonomou and included SDH surtitles, Greek Sign Language interpretation, and audio description. The process was depicted in the documentary film project Enas allos… Sartre 2018.
In 1993, French author Bianca Lamblin wrote Mémoires d’une jeune fille dérangée English title: A Disgraceful Affair, detailing her sexual exploitation by Sartre and Beauvoir. She claimed that Beauvoir seduced her as a student and then passed her on to Sartre. The book was a response to the posthumous 1990 publication of Sartre’s Lettres au Castor, in which she was referred to by the pseudonym Louise Védrine.
Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964 but turned it down.
Portrayed by Fred Wellisch in the 2000 stage production of John Susman’s three-hander Nelson & Simone at Chicago’s Live Bait Theatre, alongside Gary Houston as Nelson Algren and Rebecca Covey as Simone de Beauvoir.
Attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school in Paris.
John Huston got Sartre to script his film Freud: The Secret Passion, but it was too long and Sartre withdrew his name from the film’s credits. Nevertheless, many key elements from Sartre’s script survive in the finished film.
His mother raised him with help from her father Charles Schweitzer, a teacher of German who taught Sartre mathematics and introduced him to classical literature at a very early age.
Longtime lover of Simone de Beauvoir.
Founded the newspaper Libération with Serge July in 1973.
References to Sartre appear in the Hollywood Mouth trilogy of films directed by Jordan Mohr, who has played Simone de Beauvoir five times.

You wanted to know.

FAQ · 37

Quick answers to the questions readers ask most about Jean Paul Sartre.

When was Jean Paul Sartre born?

Jean Paul Sartre was born on June 21, 1905 in Paris, France. He was the son of Jean Baptiste Sartre and Anne Marie Schweitzer.
Where was Jean Paul Sartre born?

Jean Paul Sartre was born in Paris, France. He spent his early childhood in Meudon at the home of his grandfather.
When did Jean Paul Sartre die?

Jean Paul Sartre died on April 15, 1980 in Paris, France. He was 74 years old.
How old was Jean Paul Sartre when he died?

Jean Paul Sartre was 74 years old when he died on April 15, 1980. He died of lung cancer.
Where did Jean Paul Sartre die?

Jean Paul Sartre died in Paris, France. He was buried in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris.
How did Jean Paul Sartre die?

Jean Paul Sartre died of lung cancer. His health had been weakened by overwork, stress, drugs, and alcohol.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's real name?

Jean Paul Sartre’s birth name was Jean Paul Charles Aymard Sartre. He was born on June 21, 1905 in Paris.
What did Jean Paul Sartre do for a living?

Jean Paul Sartre was a writer, actor, and soundtrack artist. He is best known as a philosopher, novelist, and playwright.
What nationality was Jean Paul Sartre?

Jean Paul Sartre was French. He was born in Paris and lived most of his life there.
What language did Jean Paul Sartre speak?

Jean Paul Sartre spoke French. He wrote all his major works in French.
Who were Jean Paul Sartre's parents?

Jean Paul Sartre’s parents were Jean Baptiste Sartre, a naval officer, and Anne Marie Schweitzer, cousin of Albert Schweitzer. His father died when Sartre was one year old.
Where did Jean Paul Sartre go to school?

Jean Paul Sartre studied at Lycée Henri-IV, École Normale Supérieure, Cours Hattemer, Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and the University of Paris. He also attended Lycee Montaigne.
What awards did Jean Paul Sartre win?

Jean Paul Sartre won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 which he refused, the Eugène Dabit populist novel award, and the Toynbee Prize, among others.
How many awards did Jean Paul Sartre win?

Jean Paul Sartre won at least five major awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature which he declined. Other awards include the Eugène Dabit populist novel award and the Toynbee Prize.
What is Jean Paul Sartre best known for?

Jean Paul Sartre is best known for his existentialist philosophy, his novel Nausea 1938, and his play No Exit 1944. He also appeared in films like Around the World with Orson Welles.
How tall was Jean Paul Sartre?

Jean Paul Sartre was 5 feet 0 inches tall, or 1.53 meters. Despite his short stature, he was a towering figure in philosophy.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's height?

Jean Paul Sartre stood at 5 feet 0 inches 1.53 m. He was known for his small frame but large intellectual presence.
Did Jean Paul Sartre have any aliases?

Yes, Jean Paul Sartre was sometimes credited as JP.Sartre or J.P. Sartre. These initials appear in some film credits and publications.
Why did Jean Paul Sartre refuse the Nobel Prize?

Jean Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964 because he consistently declined official honors. He wanted to remain independent of institutional recognition.
Why did Jean Paul Sartre turn down the Nobel Prize?

Jean Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize in 1964 due to his principle of rejecting official distinctions. He believed that accepting such prizes would compromise his intellectual freedom.
What were Jean Paul Sartre's political views?

Jean Paul Sartre was a left-leaning intellectual who supported anti-colonial movements and socialism. He denounced Soviet labor camps in 1950 and spoke out against the Vietnam War.
Did Jean Paul Sartre serve in the military?

Yes, Sartre was drafted into the French army in 1939. He was captured by the Germans in 1940 but escaped from a POW camp in March 1941.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's relationship with Simone de Beauvoir?

Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were lifelong partners. They met at the Sorbonne, and although she refused his marriage proposal in 1932, they remained together until his death.
Did Jean Paul Sartre have children?

Jean Paul Sartre did not have biological children, but he adopted a Jewish musician named Arlette El Kaim in 1962. He later took her to Israel in 1976.
How did Jean Paul Sartre's childhood shape his philosophy?

Sartre’s father died when he was one year old, and he was raised by his strict grandfather. His mother’s remarriage to a controlling stepfather made him rebel against authority and conformity, themes central to his existentialist philosophy.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's most famous work?

Sartre’s most famous works are the novel Nausea 1938 and the play No Exit 1944. His philosophical treatise Being and Nothingness 1943 is also highly influential.
Did Jean Paul Sartre ever marry?

Jean Paul Sartre never married. He proposed to Simone de Beauvoir in 1932, but she turned him down. They remained in a long-term partnership without marrying.
Where is Jean Paul Sartre buried?

Jean Paul Sartre is buried in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris, France. Simone de Beauvoir was later buried in the same grave in 1986.
How many people attended Jean Paul Sartre's funeral?

Approximately 50,000 people attended Jean Paul Sartre’s funeral on April 19, 1980. The procession was a major public event in Paris.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's role in World War II?

Sartre served in the French army in 1939, was captured by the Germans, and escaped in 1941. He then joined the Resistance, writing for the underground newspaper Combat edited by Albert Camus.
Did Jean Paul Sartre win any other awards besides the Nobel?

Yes, Sartre won the Eugène Dabit populist novel award, the Grand Prize for the Best Novels of the Half-Century, and the Toynbee Prize. He was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's philosophy?

Sartre’s existentialism emphasized individual freedom, responsibility, and the absence of inherent meaning. He famously stated, Existence precedes essence, meaning humans define themselves through actions.
Which films did Jean Paul Sartre appear in?

Sartre appeared as himself in Around the World with Orson Welles 1955, Life Begins Tomorrow 1950, and Disorder 1950. He also appears in archive footage in Oscar Niemeyer: Life is a Breath of Air 2007.
Did Jean Paul Sartre write any plays?

Yes, Sartre wrote several plays, including No Exit 1944, The Flies 1943, and Nekrassov 1955. No Exit is his most famous play.
What was Jean Paul Sartre's relationship with Albert Camus?

Sartre and Camus were friends and colleagues during the Resistance, but they later fell out over political differences. Camus criticized Sartre’s support for Soviet communism.
Did Jean Paul Sartre ever visit Israel?

Yes, Sartre visited Israel in 1976 with his adopted daughter Arlette El Kaim. He accepted an honorary doctorate from Hebrew University during that trip.
What was the cause of Jean Paul Sartre's death?

Jean Paul Sartre died of lung cancer on April 15, 1980 in Paris. He had also suffered from edema of the lungs, exacerbated by years of heavy smoking and drinking.

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Audited & updated by

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Published on March 30, 2026

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