What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never useit for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.

emotion is first of all and in principle an accident

The more absurd life is, the more insupportable death is.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterward.

I had realized in the meantime that action too has its difficulties, and that one can also be led to it by neurosis. We are not saved by politics any more than by literature.