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“That is precisely what we should have expected, since Genet wants to live simultaneously creation, destruction, the impossibility of destroying and the impossibility of creating, since he wants both to show his rejection of the divine creation and to manifest, in the absolute, human impotence as man’s reproval of God and as the testimony of his grandeur.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

424
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Source: Being and Nothingness (1943), p. 237, 1998 edition

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

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Act 5, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

“We were too light, Electra. Now our feet press down in the earth like the wheels of a cart in its groove. Come with me, and we will walk heavily, bending under the weight of our heavy load.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Orestes, Act 3
The Flies (1943)

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

Jean Paul Sartre

L'imagination (Imagination: A Psychological Critique) http://encarta.msn.com/quote_561556153/Imagination_Imagination_is_not_an_empirical_or.html (1936)

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(219).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“The homosexual never thinks of himself when someone is branded in his presence with the name homosexual…. His sexual tastes will doubtless lead him to enter into relationships with this suspect category, but he would like to make use of them without being likened to them. Here, too, the ban that is cast on certain men by society has destroyed all possibility of reciprocity among them. Shame isolates.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“But [your crime] will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Clytemnestra to her daughter Electra, Act 1
The Flies (1943)

“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.”

Jean Paul Sartre

"On the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg," Libération (22 June 1953)

“Jupiter: I gave you the liberty to serve me.
Orestes: That is possible, but it has turned against you and there is nothing either one of us can do about it.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 3
The Flies (1943)

“For Genet, reflective states of mind are the rule. And although they are of an unstable nature in everyone, in him…reflection is always contrary to the reflected feeling.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(278).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in the night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Diary entry of Saturday noon (10 February?)
Nausea (1938)

“His obedience is real since he really and truly fulfills his mission, since he runs real risks in order to carry out the beloved’s orders. But, on the other hand, it is imaginary because he submits only to a creature of his mind.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

152
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

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

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Estelle, refusing to use the word “dead”, Act 1, sc. 5
No Exit (1944)

“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.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)

“The anti‐Semite has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights of the Jew appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse. I mentioned awhile back some remarks by anti‐Semites, all of them absurd: "I hate Jews because they make servants insubordinate, because a Jewish furrier robbed me, etc." Never believe that anti‐ Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Pages 13-14
(1945)

“I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 10, sc. 2
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“The worst of misfortunes is still a stroke of luck, since one feels oneself living when one experiences it/”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

275
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

“Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.”

Jean Paul Sartre

"Orphée Noir (Black Orpheus)"

“Only a neutral, who is indifferent to the stake and perhaps to all stakes, can appreciate aesthetically the grandeur of a fine disaster”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

(212).
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)