The appearance of the other in the world corresponds therefore to a congealed sliding of the whole universe.
When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.
Love or hatred calls for self-surrender. He cuts a fine figure, the warm-blooded, prosperous man, solidly entrenched in his well-being, who one fine day surrenders all to love – or to hatred; himself, his house, his land, his memories.
We are possessed by the things we possess. When I like an object, I always give it to someone. It isn’t generosity-it’s only because I want others to be enslaved by objects, not me.
Several hours or several years make no difference once you have lost eternity.
Once liberty has exploded in the soul of a man, the gods can do nothing against that man.
If you begin by saying, ‘Thou shalt not lie,’ there is no longer any possibility of political action.
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.
Never have I thought that I was the happy possessor of a “talent;” my sole concern has been to save myself by work and faith.
Ah! How I hate the crimes of the new generation: they are dry and sterile as darnel.
I distrust the incommunicable; it is the source of all violence.
So much torture, bloodshed, deceit. You cannot make your young people practice torture twenty-four hours a day and not expect to pay a price for it.
It is up to you to give life a meaning.
The coward makes himself cowardly, the hero makes himself heroic.
Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.
A man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.
I was escaping from Nature and at last becoming myself, that Other whom I was aspiring to be in the eyes of others.
Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself.
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.
Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.