Photographs are not ideas. They give us ideas.
For the time being I have seen enough of living things, of dogs, of men, of all flabby masses which move spontaneously.
Therefore, in the nature of this will for freedom, which freedom itself implies, I may pass judgement on those who seek to hide from themselves the complete arbitrariness and the complete freedom of their existence.
Philosophy which does not help to illuminate the process of the liberation of the oppressed should be rejected.
The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose, not his individuality, but his person in the complex society that conditions and supports him.
I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.
I know only one Church: it is the society of men.
The world would get along very well without literature. It would get along even better without man.
A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.
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.
A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.
Violence is good for those who have nothing to lose.
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.
It is enough that one man hate another for hate to gain, little by little, all mankind.
Respectable society believed in God in order to avoid having to speak about him.
If a Jew is fascinated by Christians it is not because of their virtues, which he values little, but because they represent anonymity, humanity without race.
There is no love apart from the deeds of love; no potentiality of love other than that which is manifested in loving.
God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.
I have nothing but contempt for you idiotic chosen ones who have the heart to rejoice when there are the damned in Hell and the poor on earth; as for me, I am on the side of men and I will not leave it.
Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain’s children: thy will be done. You have allowed men’s hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.