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Who really said it

Man is condemned to be free

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

Sartre said it in his lecture L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism), delivered in Paris on 29 October 1945 and published in French in 1946. The French is “l’homme est condamné à être libre”; the exact English phrase appears in Philip Mairet’s 1948 translation, which reads “man is condemned to be free.”

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

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“Man is condemned to be free” Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (lecture 1945, published 1946), trans. Philip Mairet, 1948

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Jean-Paul Sartre / Éditions Gallimard (French text); the Mairet translation via Methuen & Co. / its successors). 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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Provenance

The source

Work
L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Existentialism Is a Humanism)
Delivered
Lecture, Paris, 29 October 1945; published in French 1946 (Éditions Nagel)
French
“l’homme est condamné à être libre”
Translation
Philip Mairet, Existentialism and Humanism (Methuen, 1948)

That is what I mean when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.

Philip Mairet’s 1948 English translation of the 1945 lecture. The phrase “man is condemned to be free” is Sartre’s own; the wording after it is Mairet’s rendering of the French.

Existentialism Is a Humanism (Mairet translation) at the Marxists Internet Archive

How we traced it

  • The French original — “l’homme est condamné à être libre” — is one of the two aphorisms the lecture is remembered for, alongside “existence precedes essence,” per French Wikipedia.
  • The exact English phrase “man is condemned to be free” appears verbatim in the Philip Mairet translation hosted at the Marxists Internet Archive.
  • The line is genuinely Sartre’s but is frequently mis-sourced to Being and Nothingness (1943), where a related “I am condemned to be free” appears — see the Wikiquote entry.
In copyright

The lecture was first published in French in 1946 and the Philip Mairet English translation in 1948 — both after 1930, so the work and this translation are in copyright in the United States. Sartre died in 1980; rights rest with his estate / Éditions Gallimard, and with the translation’s publisher for the English wording.

Fact-check

The attribution is right — but the source and wording often aren’t

The line is authentically Sartre’s, so this is not a case of a fake quote. Two smaller errors do travel with it: a wrong source and a paraphrased longer form.

Being and Nothingness (1943) mis-sourced

The phrase is regularly cited as coming from Being and Nothingness. The idea of being “condemned” to freedom does appear there (“I am condemned to be free”), but the exact famous sentence “man is condemned to be free” comes from the 1945 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism, per the Wikiquote record and the lecture text.

The popular longer version reworded

The widely shared form — “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does” — is a condensed, looser rendering. Mairet’s actual 1948 text reads “Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does.” The shortened version circulates on sites like Goodreads without a source.

Sartre really said it — in his lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism (1945, published 1946), confirmed word-for-word in the Mairet translation.

Context

Why it mattered

Sartre delivered the lecture in October 1945 to defend existentialism against critics who called it gloomy and amoral. “Man is condemned to be free” compresses his central claim: with no God and no fixed human nature to fall back on, people cannot excuse their choices — they are wholly responsible for what they make of themselves.

“Condemned” is deliberately paradoxical: freedom here is not a gift but a burden nobody chose. It became one of the most quoted phrases of twentieth-century philosophy.

Man did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty — and so responsible for everything he does.

Explore

Filed under

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

Freedom Purpose

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.

Existentialism Is a Humanism (full text, Mairet trans.)marxists.org

The complete English lecture; contains “man is condemned to be free” verbatim.
Jean-Paul Sartre — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Sourced Sartre quotations, including the related “I am condemned to be free.”
L’existentialisme est un humanismefr.wikipedia.org

Record of the lecture: 29 Oct 1945 date, 1946 Éditions Nagel publication, and the French phrase.
Jean-Paul Sartre (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)plato.stanford.edu

Scholarly overview of Sartre’s account of radical freedom and responsibility.
Re-reading Sartre’s lecture Existentialism Is a Humanismaeon.co

Essay on the 1945 lecture’s context and its most famous formulations.

The author

About Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

1905–1980 · French existentialist philosopher, playwright & novelist

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was the central figure of French existentialism and the author of Being and Nothingness (1943), the novel Nausea (1938) and the play No Exit (1944). His 1945 lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism popularised the slogans “existence precedes essence” and “man is condemned to be free.” He was awarded, and declined, the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. Philip Mairet (London: Methuen, 1948); originally L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Éditions Nagel, 1946), from the lecture delivered 29 October 1945.

MLA (9th ed.)

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Humanism. Translated by Philip Mairet, Methuen, 1948.

APA (7th ed.)

Sartre, J.-P. (1948). Existentialism and humanism (P. Mairet, Trans.). Methuen. (Original work published 1946)

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