"We do not judge the people we love"
About this Quote
The subtext is existentialist and slightly bleak: human beings are free, slippery, and always inventing themselves, which makes them hard to “know” in any fixed way. Judgment tries to pin someone down, to turn a living person into an object with a stable essence: good, bad, worthy, disappointing. Sartre spent his career warning against that impulse. To judge is to freeze; to love, at least in its generous form, is to keep the other’s freedom intact, even when it’s inconvenient.
The context matters: mid-century Europe, moral reckonings after war, and Sartre’s own scandalous visibility as a public intellectual. In that world, judgment was everywhere - political, personal, ideological. The line doubles as a critique of righteous certainty. It also quietly implicates the lover: refusing to judge can be compassion, or it can be complicity. Sartre leaves that tension intact, because it’s the only honest way to describe how love actually works.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sartre, Jean-Paul. (2026, January 15). We do not judge the people we love. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-do-not-judge-the-people-we-love-7621/
Chicago Style
Sartre, Jean-Paul. "We do not judge the people we love." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-do-not-judge-the-people-we-love-7621/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"We do not judge the people we love." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-do-not-judge-the-people-we-love-7621/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.











