“certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything anymore: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.”

French philosopher, political activist, and writer

Jean-Paul Sartre was a French philosopher, political activist, and writer. He was a leading figure in 20th-century French philosophy and Marxism, and one of the central thinkers associated with existentialism. He also supported Libertarian Marxism, and his work went on to shape sociology, critical theory, post-colonial theory, and literary studies. In 1964, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature, though he tried to refuse it, saying that he usually declined official honors and that a writer should not become an institution.