Jean-Paul Sartre Quotes

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.

Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.

It is ridiculous ever to forget that you and your business are each implanted in the society of the moment. We cannot ignore the world of our time. We had better understand it.

Your problems pale in comparison with those of the millions of people in the world who do not have enough to eat.

The day hunger disappears, the world will see the greatest spiritual explosion humanity has ever seen.

The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will; but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

People are starving in the world, not because we don't have enough food, but because we're not organized. And computers are part of that.

In Rome it seems as if there were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures.

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

In a world of plenty, no one, not a single person, should go hungry. But almost 1 billion still do not have enough to eat. I want to see an end to hunger everywhere within my lifetime.

I hunger for filling in a world that is starved.

There are genuinely sufficient resources in the world to ensure that no one, nowhere, at no time, should go hungry.

It occurred to me that there wouldn't be world hunger, if you people would MOVE WHERE THE FOOD IS!!!

Literary fiction and poetry are real marginalized right now. There's a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol' "The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we're marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah." You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it's because it's not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it's speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me.

Art is not some inessential frippery - it is the nation's means of intelligently regarding itself. To cripple or stigmatize the arts is to doom one's nation to a life of incuriosity, dullness, literalness and the worst kind of rank materialism.

The whole world has changed, so you just stay current with the world. There's nothing different in my language of how I say things.

We cannot exist as a little island of well-being in a world where two-thirds of the people go to bed hungry every night.

A work of art has value only if tremors of the future run through it.

I don’t want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies, and I don’t want to be the one not to know when to leave the party.

The classic literature is always modern.

If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.

I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature. I prefer to talk about the gift of literature rather than its role or task. You know, gynecology has a role; sex is a gift. And literature is not about sending messages.

And every true artist is the salvation of every other. But only artists produce for each other the world that is fit to live in.

To call that writing, madam, is an insult to quills and ink across the world.

The secret of a successful art career is to make more art that folks think they need than pieces they just want. When a piece of art emotionally connects with a person the work becomes a need. You are then on your way to becoming successful.