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With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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Jean-Paul Sartre
Age: 74 †
Born: 1905
Born: January 1
Died: 1980
Died: January 1
Author
Biographer
Epistemologist
Essayist
Existentialist
Intellectual
Literary Critic
Meteorologist
Novelist
Ontologist
Opinion Journalist
Paris
France
Jean Paul Sartre
J.P. Sartre
Sarutoru
Rangbao'er Sate
Jacques Guillemin
Sate
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre
J.-P. Sartre
Sartre
Men
Despair
Coming
Alone
Rejoices
Rights
Expects
Acting
Counting
True
Rejoice
Nothing
Optimism
Good
Begins

More quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre

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Before you come alive, life is nothing it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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When one does nothing, one believes oneself responsible for everything.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I needed to justify my existence, and I had made an absolute of literature. It took me thirty years to get rid of this state of mind.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up I forget them almost immediately.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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It’s the well-behaved children that make the most formidable revolutionaries. They don’t say a word, they don’t hide under the table, they eat only one piece of chocolate at a time. But later on, they make society pay dearly.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!
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You see, I'm fond of teasing, it's a second nature with me—and I'm used to teasing myself. Plaguing myself, if you prefer I don't tease nicely.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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It is not a matter of indifference whether we like oysters or clams, snails or shrimp, if only we know how to unravel the existential significance of these foods.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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The more absurd life is, the more insupportable death is.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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If I did not publish this autobiography [Les Mots] sooner and in its most radical form, it is because I considered it exaggerated.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I maintain that inversion is the effect of neither a prenatal choice nor an endocrinal malformation nor even the passive and determined result of complexes. It is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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[Andre] Gide can say it to me: it is a writer's morality only addressed to a few privileged people. For that reason it no longer interests me.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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What I ask of [the writer] is not to ignore the reality and the fundamental problems that exist. The world's hunger, the atomic threat, the alienation of man, I am astonished that they do not color all our literature.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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The [Communist] Party has one objective: the creation of a socialist economy and one means: the utilization of the class struggle.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing.
Jean-Paul Sartre
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It is no longer possible to escape men. Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.
Jean-Paul Sartre