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 "I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow..." (Sartre, Nausea)
"Existence precedes and commands Essence." (Jean Paul Sartre)
'Bad faith' is an important concept in Sartrean existentialism. To act in bad faith is to turn away from the authentic choosing of oneself and to act in conformity with a stereotype or role. Sartre's most famous example is that of a waiter:
"Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the patrons with a step a little too quick .. his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer .. he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things .. the waiter in the cafe plays with his condition in order to realize it." (Sartre, 1943)
 "We regarded any situation as raw material for our joint efforts and not as a factor conditioning them: we imagined ourselves to be wholly independent agents. ... We had no external limitations, no overriding authority, no imposed pattern of existence, We created our own links with the world, and freedom was the very essence of our existence". (Simone de Beauvoir, 1963)
 "This work is an attempt to understand the time I live in." (Albert Camus on 'The Rebel')
"One might think, that a period which, within fifty years, uproots, enslaves or kills seventy million human beings, should only, and forthwith, be condemned. But also its guilt must be understood.
Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge." (Albert Camus on 'The Rebel')
"The major philosophical change, a marked break with Sartrean existentialism, is Camus' view that there is such thing as human nature, the conclusion he draws from his analysis of the concept of the revolt in life and art. In the concept of human nature Camus finds a reason and cause for union between human beings. The detachment of the absurdity is replaced by a ethic of sympathy, community and service to others." (One Hundred Twentieth Century Philosophers, Stewart Brown, Diane Collinson, Robert Wilkinson, Routledge 1998)
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'Existence precedes and commands Essence'. (Jean Paul Sartre)