One does not adopt a new idea, one slips into it.

If I did not publish this autobiography [Les Mots] sooner and in its most radical form, it is because I considered it exaggerated.

What is life but an unpleasant interruption to a peaceful nonexistence.

Why do you keep maintaining your ideas are right if you can't prove them?

Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is.

Man can will nothing 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.

Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.