Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), one of the most important French philosophers of the 20th century, a representative of French atheistic existentialism, and the most active advocate of Western socialism, refused to accept any prizes in his lifetime, including the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature. He stood on the side of justice in all the post-war struggles, expressed sympathy for all kinds of disenfranchised people, opposed the Cold War, and was also an excellent writer, dramatist, and critic.
1. All people spend their time explaining to each other and celebrating that they agree. My Goodness, how much they value the "all people have the same opinion" thing.
2. The world is absurd, life is painful, life is meaningless.
3. You see precisely because you want to see.
4. I just exist, that's all, and I feel sick.
5. The man who tortures others tries to destroy the humanity of his kind, and as a consequence, he also destroys his own humanity.
6. Loyalty, even deep loyalty, is never white and flawless.
7. Both God and the king have a painful secret, which is that man is free.
8. No need for a red-hot grill, hell is someone else. They can bake you confused through the indoctrination of ideas.
9. We can daydream a lot, we can fail, we can cry, but we can also shine brightly.
10. Thoughts flow through my mind, faster or slower, and I do not leave anything behind, I let them pass away naturally. In many cases, my thoughts remain vague due to the lack of words to attach to, converging into vague but interesting forms, greedily devouring each other, and immediately I forget them.
11. Self-deception always oscillates between sincerity and cynicism.
12 Loneliness is an essential feature of human attributes, which is provoked by a contradiction that exists between man's "need to find the meaning of life" and his "awareness of the nothingness of the nature of the human world."
13. "Man is like a dice, throwing himself into life."
14 Man is destined to suffer from freedom. For he did not create himself, but he was free. Because once thrown into the world, he has to take responsibility for everything he does.
15. While it's still too late, I want to see myself clearly.
16. You are free, so you choose - that is to say, invent and create. There is no universal moral code that can point you to what you should do: there is no sign of heaven in the world.
17. There is no human nature because no God provides a concept of a person. People are people. This is not only what he thinks he is, but also what he wants to be, what he wants to be after he has gone from nothing to non-existence to existence. Man is nothing but what he thinks he is. This is the first principle of existentialism.
18. Not choosing is actually a choice.
19. We suffer because we are free.
20. Man is nothing more than what he intends to be. As much as man realizes himself, he has as many beings as he has. Therefore, he is the totality of his actions, his life.
21. Man has the right to choose, and man acquires his essence through choice.
22 Man is the result of his own actions, and nothing else.
23. The more absurd life is, the more unbearable death becomes.
24. We have come into this world not for pleasure, but for the purpose of settling accounts.
25 No one hinders my freedom, it is my life itself that drains my freedom.
26 Man first exists, encounters encounters, the world rises and falls, and then defines himself. For, in the beginning, man has nothing, only later becomes something.
27. I know that I will never meet anyone or anything that arouses our enthusiasm again. You know, loving someone is no small thing, it requires perseverance, generosity, and desperation... In the beginning, you even have to jump over an abyss. If I had thought it through, I wouldn't have done it. And now, I know, I'll never jump again.
28 Before any truth can be found, man must have an absolute truth, and this simple, easily found truth, which everyone can grasp, is that man can feel himself directly.
29. Man is sentenced to liberty as a sentence of imprisonment.
30 The essence of reality is scarcity, a universal and eternal deficiency, where everything in this world is not available enough. Not enough food, not enough love, not enough justice, no time ever.
31. Existence precedes essence.
32. Man has the nature to suppress others. And we are born free, and that freedom is freedom of choice.
33. Life gives me what I want, and at the same time makes me understand that it doesn't make sense. Even if you get your favorite, you still feel empty.
34. The best job isn't doing what you think is hardest, it's what you're best at.
35. Writing is a rebellion against life.
36. I live because I was born. I was born because my parents gave birth to me. I myself did not ask for birth. But once I was born, alive, I had to adapt to my surroundings, pursue the best possible outcome, and try to give the right direction to freedom that was distorted in the first place— something that everyone wants to do. I say that freedom is distorted because our parents, when they conceive us, determine our destiny, and they envision that we will be one person or another, with one profession or another, and so on. Our freedoms are distorted, influenced by education, by the information provided daily by the news and the media.
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