"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 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.”