Existentialism is a Humanism, Jean-Paul Sartre 1946

any man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions, or by inventing some deterministic doctrine, is a self-deceiver.

When Descartes said, “Conquer yourself rather than the world,” what he meant was, at bottom, the same – that we should act without hope.

If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts.