Albert Camus Quotes

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back. Truly yours, Albert Camus

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

We are all special cases.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests.

Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.

Life is a sum of all your choices". So, what are you doing today?

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but function. Stay inside, go out - I don't care what you'll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.

I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures - be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

After another moment's silence she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason.

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.

You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.

The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

There is but one true philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

Thinking is learning all over again how to see, directing one's consciousness, making of every image a privileged place.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, hence it remains the favorite pastime of the great lovers of their own person.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Life is the result of all your choices.

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alone is an end unto himself. Everything one tries to do for the common good ends in failure.

All healthy men have thought of their own suicide

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

Children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort, man can only propose to diminish, arithmetically, the sufferings of the world.

The innocent is the person who explains nothing

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

A sub-clerk in the post-office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them.

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.

In our society, any man who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral is liable to be condemned to death.

Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.

The truth, as the light, makes blind.

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.