216 quotes
I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.
Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound and secret delirium of nature — could explain it.
Nausea (1938)
For those who want 'to change life", 'to reinvent love,' God is nothing but a hindrance.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.
This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.
Nausea (1938)
It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
The French bourgeois doesn't dislike shit, provided it is served up to him at the right time.
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)
Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.
Dirty Hands (1948)
As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
Dirty Hands (1948)
It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.
I am a man, Jupiter, and each man must invent his own path.
The Flies (1943)
I know only one Church: it is the society of men.
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)
Human life begins on the far side of despair.
Les Mouches (1943)
I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
Dirty Hands (1948)
One always dies too soon — or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.
No Exit (1944)