Jean-Paul Sartre — Quote from No Exit
“Hell is other people.”
No Exit (1944)
Concepts: loneliness, alienation, solidarity
Resonant Quotes
- “The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.” — Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday Woolf's eyes of others as prisons and Sartre's hell as other people are twin formulations of the same existential tra...
- “What makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one's own self which can b...” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism Sartre finds torment in the gaze of others; Arendt finds torment in their absence — together they map the full spectr...
- “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. To be healed we must come...” — bell hooks, All About Love These quotes illuminate opposite poles of human relationality—hooks emphasizes our fundamental need for community in ...
- “Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of comm...” — bell hooks, All About Love These quotes present opposing visions of intersubjectivity—Sartre's others as imprisoning objectifiers versus hooks' ...
- “To catch a glimmer of oneself in the other — this is the deepest joy the huma...” — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity Despite sharing existentialist roots, these quotes diverge fundamentally on whether other people constitute our priso...
- “Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the inter...” — Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition Arendt reframes Sartre's interpersonal hell as the necessary condition for meaningful human action — plurality create...
- “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of t...” — James Baldwin, The Paris Review Interviews Baldwin's insight about reading reveals how encountering others' experiences through literature can transform Sartre'...
- “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.” — Albert Camus, The Stranger Both existentialist insights reveal different responses to alienation—Camus seeks solace in nature's neutrality while...