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Who really said it

Hell is other people

Written by Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980 · French existentialist philosopher, playwright & novelist
Verified In copyright

It is the closing line of Garcin in Sartre’s one-act play Huis clos (No Exit), first staged in Paris in May 1944. The famous English “Hell is other people” renders the French “L’enfer, c’est les autres”; the Stuart Gilbert translation prints it as “Hell is—other people!” The attribution is firm — what’s widely misunderstood is the meaning.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Hell is other people” Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit (Huis clos, 1944) — "Hell is—other people!" (Garcin)

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Éditions Gallimard (French original) and the English translation’s publisher; Sartre died in 1980.). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Work
Huis clos (No Exit)
Author
Jean-Paul Sartre
First staged
May 1944, Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, Paris
Translation
French “L’enfer, c’est les autres”; English “Hell is—other people!” (Stuart Gilbert)

So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!

Garcin’s speech near the end of the play, in the Stuart Gilbert English translation. The bare four-word form “Hell is other people” is the wording that circulates most widely.

Full text of No Exit (Internet Archive)

How we verified this

In copyright

Huis clos was first performed and published in 1944–1945 by Éditions Gallimard, and the widely quoted English wording comes from a 1940s translation (Stuart Gilbert). As a mid-20th-century work by an author who died in 1980, it remains under copyright in the United States; only the bare four-word phrase, too short to protect on its own, circulates freely.

Fact-check

The catch: it’s his, but it’s misread

The authorship here is not in doubt — Sartre wrote it. What’s routinely wrong is the meaning, and the way the compressed English flattens the French.

Popular usage misread

It’s quoted to mean “other people are unbearable.” In a 1965 talk Sartre said the line had “always been misunderstood ↗” — he meant only that when our relations with others are twisted, those others become our hell, not that all relationships are poisoned.

The English rendering paraphrase

“L’enfer, c’est les autres” is more literally “Hell is the others” / “the Other.” The tidy “Hell is other people” is a translator’s smoothing; Stuart Gilbert’s printed text keeps the dash: “Hell is—other people! ↗”

The quote is genuinely Sartre’s, from No Exit (1944) ↗ — spoken by the character Garcin, and, by Sartre’s own account, almost always taken to mean the opposite of what he intended.

Context

Why it mattered

Sartre’s play strands three dead strangers in a windowless drawing room with no torturer, no fire, and no exit — the punishment is simply each other’s endless presence and judgment. The line lands as Garcin realizes there will be no red-hot pokers: the eternal watching is the torment.

The idea is the dramatic payoff of Sartre’s philosophy of “the look”: that another consciousness turns me into an object and I come to see and judge myself through their eyes. Read that way, “hell” is not other people as such, but the loss of self that happens when those relationships curdle.

There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

No Exiten.wikipedia.org

Overview of Huis clos: 1944 premiere, plot, Garcin’s line and its meaning
No Exitbritannica.com

Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the play and its themes
Full text of No Exitarchive.org

Complete English text (Stuart Gilbert translation) containing the exact line
Sartre’s Famous Quote Explainedthecollector.com

Explainer quoting Garcin’s speech and the play’s three-character setup
The Most Famous Thing Sartre Never Saidrickontheater.blogspot.com

On the misreading and Sartre’s own 1965 clarification of the line
Hell Is Other People1000wordphilosophy.com

Short scholarly introduction to what Sartre actually meant

The true author

About Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

1905–1980 · French existentialist philosopher, playwright & novelist

Jean-Paul Sartre was the leading figure of 20th-century French existentialism and the author of Being and Nothingness (1943). His 1944 play Huis clos (No Exit) dramatizes his idea of “the look” — that we are made into objects by the gaze and judgment of others — which is the real thought behind Garcin’s line. He was awarded, and famously declined, the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit (Huis clos, 1944), trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946) — Garcin: “Hell is—other people!”

MLA (9th ed.)

Sartre, Jean-Paul. No Exit. Translated by Stuart Gilbert, Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.

APA (7th ed.)

Sartre, J.-P. (1946). No Exit (S. Gilbert, Trans.). Alfred A. Knopf. (Original work published 1944)

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Hell is other people’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/hell-is-other-people

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