“The past is the luxury of proprietors.”

—  Jean Paul Sartre , book Nausea

Nausea (1938)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The past is the luxury of proprietors." by Jean Paul Sartre?
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Jean Paul Sartre 321
French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, sc… 1905–1980

Related quotes

Thomas Robert Malthus photo

“Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book II, Chapter I, On the Progress of Wealth, Section VII, p. 374
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

John Bright photo

“In the Cabinet there were large Irish proprietors, and, without imputing to any proprietor a desire of doing injustice to his tenants, it was easy to understand that after the long continuance of the present state of the law in Ireland, proprietors were alarmed at any proposition coming to them like the Bill of the hon. Member for Rochdale. The Irish proprietors in the Cabinet, in that House, and out of it, were afraid of a Bill that would interfere with the powers and privileges that a Parliament of landowners for generations past had been conferring upon the proprietors of the soil. That was the point. The question was, could the cats wisely and judiciously legislate for the mice? He did not believe it. He was as much opposed as any man could be to transferring the land from the landlord to the tenant; but a measure of justice was due from the former to the latter, both in Ireland and in this country as well.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1852/feb/10/tenant-right-ireland in the House of Commons (10 February 1852).
1850s

Raj Patel photo

“We are not the consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors.”

Raj Patel (1972) British academic

Ways to Counter the Excesses of the Market (24:00) http://fora.tv/2010/01/06/Raj_Patel_The_Value_of_Nothing#fullprogram FORA.tv

“...there is no accessible luxury. There is no aspirational luxury. It’s either luxury or not luxury.”

Brunello Cucinelli (1953) Italian entrepreneur and philanthropist

Source: CEO Talk | Brunello Cucinelli, Founder and Chief Executive https://www.businessoffashion.com/amp/articles/ceo-talk/ceo-talk-brunello-cucinelli-founder-chief-executive-brunello-cucinelli Imran Amed, Business of Fashion, 1 July 2014

Adam Smith photo

“It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book III, Chapter IV, p. 420.

Augusto Pinochet photo

“The nation is trying to make Chile a country of proprietors, not of proletarians.”

Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006) Former dictator of the republic of Chile

Speech (24 April 1987), quoted in "Las frases para el bronce de Pinochet."
1980s

Livy photo

“The state is suffering from two opposite vices, avarice and luxury; two plagues which, in the past, have been the ruin of every great empire.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Source: History of Rome, Book XXXIV, sec. 4

Simone Weil photo

“Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

Source: Gravity and Grace (1947), p. 78, (1972 edition)

Elfriede Jelinek photo

“For the first thing a proprietor learns, and painfully at that, is: Trust is fine, but control is better.”

Elfriede Jelinek book The Piano Teacher

P 5
The Piano Teacher (1988)

Alexander the Great photo

“Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war.”

Alexander the Great (-356–-323 BC) King of Macedon

Addressing his troops prior to the Battle of Issus, as quoted in Anabasis Alexandri by Arrian Book II, 7
Context: Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service — but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay — and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops — Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes — they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they — Darius!

Related topics