6 Nobel Prize Winners Who Declined The Prize

2. Jean-Paul Sartre

1905-1980

Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age” in 1964.

Jean-Paul Sartre declined the award, explaining that the reasons that motivated his decision were personal and objective. The personal reason was his firm belief that “all the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure… If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prizewinner“.

On the other side, his objective reason was his conviction that “only battle possible today on the cultural front is the battle for the peaceful coexistence of the two cultures, that of the East and that of the West.” While he admitted that “Nobel Prize in itself is not a literary prize of the Western bloc”, he pointed out that prize was awarded either to the West writers or the rebels of the East. “It is regrettable that the prize was given to Pasternak and not to Sholokhov, and that the only Soviet work thus honored should be one published abroad and banned in its own country.”

Finally, Sartre mentioned the question of money and whether he had the right to reject money which would provide enormous help to the organization that fought for important causes. However, he concluded by saying that it is a false dilemma and that one couldn’t renounce his own principles for money.