Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes on Justice
Jean-Paul Sartre's treatment of justice runs through his plays and novels rather than a formal treatise, and the quotes gathered here are drawn from that dramatic work. A recurring theme is that justice is a strictly human responsibility: in The Flies, Orestes declares that justice is a human issue and that he needs no god to teach it to him, a claim that fits Sartre's existentialist insistence that human beings alone create their values. His later, politically engaged plays such as Dirty Hands and The Devil and the Good Lord stage the hard questions of revolutionary violence, what it costs and whether bloodshed can purchase a more just future. Across these works Sartre presents justice as inseparable from freedom, choice, and the weight of personal responsibility for one's acts.
Quotes
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“He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.”
L'âge de raison ( The Age of Reason ) (1945) -
“What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”
The Flies(1943) | Orestes, Act 2 -
“Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6 -
“It is the same thing: killing, dying, it is the same thing: one is just as alone in each. He is lucky, he will only die once. As for me, for ten days I have been killing him at every minute.”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Hugo to Jessica, on his plans to kill Hoederer, Act 5, sc. 2 -
“Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.”
Dirty Hands(1948) | Act 5, sc. 2 -
“I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.”
The Devil and the Good Lord(1951) | Act 3, sc. 5 -
“The French bourgeois doesn't dislike shit, provided it is served up to him at the right time.”
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr(1952) | Book 2, "To Succeed in Being All, Strive to be Nothing in Anything" -
“I wanted for the moments in my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. It would be just as well to try to catch time by the tail.”
Nausea(1938) -
“Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.”
The Flies(1943) | Act 1