Jean‑Paul Sartre birthday
writersJun 21, 202627212
Jean-Paul Sartre was born June 21, 1905 in Paris. The French philosopher, novelist and playwright wrote Being and Nothingness (1943) and the play No Exit (1944), and he declined the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature. Sartre argued that "existence precedes essence" and penned memorable lines such as "We are our choices" and "Hell is other people." His existentialist ideas reshaped postwar philosophy, literature and political debate across Europe and beyond.