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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

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What I lacked [in La Nausee] was a sense of reality. I have changed since. I have slowly learned to experience reality.
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A good hanging now and then -- that entertains folk in the provinces and robs death of its glamour.
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I can receive nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity.
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You are -- your life, and nothing else.
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For common minds have an ugly ability to perceive in the deepest and richest saying nothing but their own everyday opinion.
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Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.
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That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.
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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.
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So long as one believes in God, one has the right to do the Good in order to be moral.
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There are two ways of destroying a people. Either condemn them en bloc or force them to repudiate the leaders they adopted. The second is the worse.
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Hell is for other people.
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The lad who dreams of being a boxing champion or an admiral chooses reality. If the writer chooses the imaginary, he confuses the two.
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All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.
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It is disgusting -- Why must we have bodies?
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The recent experiences of pocketbooks prove this. I have changed my public since my works have been published in a smaller format.
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You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.
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First all men must be able to become men by the improvement of their conditions of existence, so that a universal morality can be created. If I begin by saying to them: Thou shalt not lie, there is no longer any possibility of political action. What matters first is the liberation of man.
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Man is abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no aim but what he sets himself.
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I think [Alain Robbe-Grillet] a good writer, but he speaks to the comfortable bourgeoisie.
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