If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul SartreRead
I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a resistance to external expectations and a desire for autonomy in one's actions.
Jean-Paul Sartre's quote reflects the existentialist idea that individuals should not be burdened by the expectations and desires of others. Instead, he suggests that the pressure to conform to others' anticipations often leads him to act in rebellion against those expectations. This highlights a fundamental struggle for personal freedom and authenticity in the face of societal norms and pressures.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing existentialism, this quote can illustrate the importance of personal choice.
If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
All I want is' - and he uttered the final words through clenched teeth and with a sort of shame - 'to retain my freedom.' I should myself have thought,' said Jacques, 'that freedom consisted in frankly confronting situations into which one had deliberately entered, and accepting all one's responsibilities. But that, no doubt, is not your view.
If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
A kiss without a moustache, they said then, is like an egg without salt; I will add to it: and it is like Good without Evil.
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.
Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.
Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . .
I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.
If God is treated as God during suffering, then suffering can reveal and present him in all his greatness.
The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish.
I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society.
Wood feeds the fire which burns it.
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