In his famous twentieth-century play, No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the “burning marl.” Old wives’ tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people!” This line, “Hell is other people,” is perhaps one of Sartre’s most famous quotes as well as one of his most misrepresented. He is not suggesting that other people are inherently evil or bad or unlikable, but rather, that hell is the imposed state of dependance and modification of one’s self according to the integration, approval, and satisfaction
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