"I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be"
About this Quote
A chill runs through Sartre’s line because it refuses the comforting fiction that virtue is a private possession. “I am not virtuous” isn’t confession as much as indictment: in a world built by conquest, exploitation, and state violence, moral purity is a luxury product. The second sentence lands like a guillotine blade. “Our sons will be” ties ethics to inheritance, not individual willpower. Virtue becomes an entitlement purchased on credit, and the bill is paid in bodies.
Sartre’s provocation works by contaminating a noble word with the mechanics of history. He forces the reader to hear “right to be [virtuous]” the way one hears “right to vote” or “right to property” - as something secured and defended through power. The phrase “shed enough blood” is deliberately blunt, stripping away the rhetoric that usually sanitizes nation-building and revolution. It also exposes a generational hypocrisy: the adults do violence and call it necessity so their children can later call themselves humane.
Context matters: Sartre wrote in the shadow of World War II, and later amid decolonization struggles (especially Algeria), when European humanism looked increasingly like a mask worn by empires. The subtext is not that bloodshed is good, but that innocence is often retrospective propaganda. If you want a future where people can afford to be decent, Sartre suggests, stop pretending decency can be minted without confronting the violent foundations that make comfort possible.
Sartre’s provocation works by contaminating a noble word with the mechanics of history. He forces the reader to hear “right to be [virtuous]” the way one hears “right to vote” or “right to property” - as something secured and defended through power. The phrase “shed enough blood” is deliberately blunt, stripping away the rhetoric that usually sanitizes nation-building and revolution. It also exposes a generational hypocrisy: the adults do violence and call it necessity so their children can later call themselves humane.
Context matters: Sartre wrote in the shadow of World War II, and later amid decolonization struggles (especially Algeria), when European humanism looked increasingly like a mask worn by empires. The subtext is not that bloodshed is good, but that innocence is often retrospective propaganda. If you want a future where people can afford to be decent, Sartre suggests, stop pretending decency can be minted without confronting the violent foundations that make comfort possible.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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