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.

They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: "Give me bread".

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

We are in hell and I will have my turn!

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

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.

It is better; heavier, crueler. The mouth you wear for hell.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

And when we speak of "abandonment" - a favorite word of Heidegger - we only mean to say that God does not exist and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end.

I know only one Church: it is the society of men.

...man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards.

In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.

Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.

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.

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do - any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.

When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.

Dostoevsky once wrote: "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself. He discovers forthwith, that he is without excuse.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.

Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?

Hugo: No. 

Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.

Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.

If you want to deserve Hell, you need only stay in bed. The world is iniquity; if you accept it, you are an accomplice, if you change it you are an executioner.

On est ce qu'on veut. A man is what he wills himself to be.

I entered the [Communist] Party because its cause was just and I will leave it when it ceases to be just.

He is dead, and my hatred has died with him.

Life has no meaning a priori ... It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

You have stolen my face from me: you know it and I no longer do.

What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never use it for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.

When Descartes said, "Conquer yourself rather than the world," what he meant was, at bottom, - the same - that we should act without hope. Marxists, to whom I have said thus have answered: "Your action is limited, obviously, by your death: but you can rely upon the help of others.

It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing. Act 1, sc. 5 Variant translation: Among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.

Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Eh bien, continuons... Well, let's get on with it.

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

Jupiter: I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers?

Aegisteus: Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little.

It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!

It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

Don't you feel the same way? When I cannot see myself, even though I touch myself, I wonder if I really exist.

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, "let others do what I cannot do." The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, "Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is." Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching.

Your church is a whore: she sells her favors to the rich.

If we must absolutely mention this state of affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves "absent", that is more proper.

It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute. Hugo to Jessica, on his plans to kill.