Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes
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How can I, who was not able to retain my own past, hope to save that of another?
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Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.
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I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.
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Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?Hugo: No.Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.
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…the prisoner’s dreams is the guard’s spirituality
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That is precisely what we should have expected, since Genet wants to live simultaneously creation, destruction, the impossibility of destroying and the impossibility of creating, since he wants both to show his rejection of the divine creation and to manifest, in the absolute, human impotence as man’s reproval of God and as the testimony of his grandeur.
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Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.
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For Genet, Beauty will be the offensive weapon that will enable him to beat the just on their own ground: that of value.
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…the reality of society involves the socialization of certain unrealities.
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…and if you are common, you can dress up as a woman, show you behind or write poems: there’s nothing offensive about a naked behind if it’s everybody’s; each person will be mirrored in it.
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The past is the luxury of proprietors.
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A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.
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But since he has decided to have the impossibility of living, every misfortune is an opportunity which lays this importance of living before his eyes and obliges him to decide, once again, to die.
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Your crystal? That’s silly. Whom do you think you are fooling? Come on, everyone knows that I threw the baby out of the window. The crystal is shattered on earth, and I do not care. I am no longer anything but a skin, and my skin does not belong to you.
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The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.
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Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.
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I know only one Church: it is the society of men.
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The strangest mores of the most of-the-way societies will, in spite of everything, be relatively comprehensible to the person who has a flesh-and-blood knowledge of man’s needs, anxieties, and hopes. If, on the other hand, this experience is lacking, he will not even be able to understand the customs of those about him.
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You have stolen my face from me: you know it and I no longer do.
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If only you knew how little I care. Cowardly or not, as long as he is a good kisser.
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They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: 'Give me bread'.
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Jupiter: I gave you the liberty to serve me.Orestes: That is possible, but it has turned against you and there is nothing either one of us can do about it.
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Je suis condamné à être libre.
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In some places the metropolis makes do with paying a clique of feudal overlords; in others, it has fabricated a fake bourgeoisie of colonized subjects in a system of divide and rule; elsewhere, it has killed two birds with one stone: the colony is both settlement and exploitation.