All human desires reduce to a desire to be or a desire to have.

Evidence

Thus we can advance no further but have encountered the self-evident irreducible when we have reached the project of being; for obviously it is impossible to advance further than being, and there is no difference between the project of being, possibility, value, on the one hand, and being, on the other. Fundamentally man is the desire to be, and the existence of this desire is not to be established by an empirical induction; it is the result of an a priori description of the being of the for-itself, since desire is a lack and since the for-itself is the being which is to itself its own lack of being. The original project which is expressed in each of our empirically observable tendencies is then the project of being; or, if you prefer, each empirical tendency exists with the original project of being, in a relation of expression and symbolic satisfaction just as conscious drives, with Freud, exist in relation to the complex and to the original libido. Moreover the desire to be by no means exists first in order to cause itself to be expressed subsequently by desires a posteriori. There is nothing outside of the symbolic expression which it finds in concrete desires. There is not first a single desire of being, then a thousand particular feelings, but the desire to be exists and manifests itself only in and through jealousy, greed, love of art, cowardice, courage, and a thousand contingent, empirical expressions which always cause human reality to appear to us only as manifested by a particular man, by a specific person. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1329 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Consequently, what remains to us after the annihilation of will, except will again, is assuredly nothing; — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 79 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: All concrete desires reduce to having, doing, or being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1349; The desire to do ultimately reduces to a desire to be; Man is fundamentally the desire to be, a lack of being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1329 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The desire to do ultimately reduces to a desire to be #expands (0.95)
• Man is fundamentally the desire to be, a lack of being #exemplifies (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1329
• Life’s essence may reduce to the will to exist. #qualifies (0.72) — Leo Tolstoy, A Confession, 79