"Genet is a man-failure: he wills the impossible in order to derive from the tragic grandeur of this defeat the assurance that there is something other than the possible."

Jean-Paul Sartre Philosophy See all quotes by Jean-Paul Sartre →

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

“Man cannot will unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth.”

“For Genet, Beauty will be the offensive weapon that will enable him to beat the just on their own ground: that of value.”

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

“Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.”

“Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.”

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