He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.
She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.
Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away…. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.
I am responsible for everything … except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world … in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
All human activities are equivalent … and … all are on principle doomed to failure.
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.
Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.
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.
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?
I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.
If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
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.
Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
