
(French philosopher, author, and journalist) 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960
(French philosopher, author, and journalist) 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960
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We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
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Existence is illusory and it is eternal.
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Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
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Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.
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What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
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I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.
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The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
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One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.
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Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never.
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There are more things to admire in men then to despise.
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How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!
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Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
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Today we are always as ready to judge as we are to fornicate.
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I’ve never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.
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The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
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I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries gray and poverty unbearable.
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It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
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To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
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If there were a party of those who aren’t sure they’re right, I’d belong to it.
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Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?
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Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.
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Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.
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I love life – that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.
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It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.
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Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.
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Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.
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The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.
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Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.
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A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.
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Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
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Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future – and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
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Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
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The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.
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Style, like sheer silk underwear, sometimes hides eczema.
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There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.
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Stupidity always carries doggedly on.
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It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all. Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.
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If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.
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Yes, be patient with me. My heart is heavy.
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The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
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The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
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Peace is the only battle worth waging.
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I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.
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The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.
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The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations that escape our ears.
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Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments.
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One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn’t know.
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Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
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Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?