Sartre: You Are What You Do. Period. (1948)

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Many of you have said or heard someone say, "I never had the opportunity. My circumstances were against me. Deep down, I am so much more than my life has shown." I understand the comfort of that thought. I am here to destroy it. There is no love apart from loving.

[00:00:18]There is no genius apart from the work of genius. The genius of Proust is the total of the books Proust wrote. Nothing more. You cannot point at some invisible potential inside yourself that excuses your inaction. A coward is not a coward because of bad blood or weak lungs.

[00:00:34]A coward is a coward because of what he did or did not do.

[00:00:38]This is terrifying, yes, but it is also liberating because it means the coward can choose tomorrow to stop being a coward. The hero can stop being a hero.

[00:00:49]Nothing is fixed. You are not a thing.

[00:00:51]You are a project. Always in motion.

[00:00:54]Always being made. You are nothing else but the sum of your actions.