Quote by Jean-Paul Sartre: “Existence precedes essence.”

We are not born with a fixed nature or purpose — we exist first, and then through our choices and actions we create who we are. There is no predetermined human soul or destiny; we are entirely responsible for what we make of ourselves.

Sartre delivered 'Existentialism Is a Humanism' in Paris in October 1945, two months after the end of World War II. Europe was confronting the question of how humans were capable of the atrocities of Nazism, and Sartre's insistence on radical human freedom — and radical human responsibility — was both a philosophical and political response.

French philosopher, novelist, and playwright who is the central figure of twentieth-century existentialism. His 1943 work Being and Nothingness and his 1945 lecture 'Existentialism Is a Humanism' defined a philosophy of radical freedom and individual responsibility.