Near the end of his life, the famed existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre told Pierre Victor: "I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God."

His fellow existentialist and long-time companion Simone de Beauvoir was not impressed. "How," she asked, "should one explain the senile act of a turncoat?"