Skip to content

Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn't exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn't possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey.

— Jean-Paul Sartre Les Temps modernes (1961)

Another quote →

Topics

Socialism

More quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

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)

All Jean-Paul Sartre quotes →

You may also like

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Winston Churchill

In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.

George Orwell

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jean-Paul Sartre (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.