Albert Camus Quotes: Albert Camus (born 7 November 1913, Mondovi, Algeria – d. 4 January 1960, near Sens, France) was a French thinker, novelist, essayist and playwright. He won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Albert Camus Quotes
‘”You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”‘
‘”The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”‘
‘”It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”‘
‘”A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”‘
‘”Always go too far, because that is where you will find the truth”‘
‘”Where there is no hope, we must invent it.”‘
‘”Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.”‘
‘”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.”‘
‘”Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”‘
‘”The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.”‘
‘”Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”‘
‘”Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.”‘
‘”Do not walk behind me; I may not lead. Do not walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.”‘
‘”People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”‘
‘”The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”‘
‘”Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”‘
‘”Life is a sum of all your choices”. So, what are you doing today?”‘
‘”I know of only one duty, and that is to love.”‘
‘”The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.”‘
‘”Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it is meaningless.”‘
‘”Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”‘
‘”The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.”‘
‘”There is no shame in preferring happiness.”‘
‘”There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”‘
‘”To grow old is to pass from passion to compassion.”‘
‘”Life is the sum of your choices.”‘
‘”The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.”‘
‘”All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.”‘
‘”Yes, everything is simple. It is people who complicate things.”‘
‘”Integrity needs no rules.”‘
‘”Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.”‘
‘”Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”‘
‘”There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.”‘
‘”The Four Conditions of Happiness: Life in the open air, Love for another being, Freedom from ambition, Creation”‘
‘”The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding.”‘
‘”The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.”‘
‘”It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.”‘
‘”The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”‘
‘”Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”‘
‘”You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”‘
‘”Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.”‘
‘”Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”‘
‘”It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”‘
‘”Find your happiness in yourself.”‘
‘”What is a rebel? A man who says no.”‘
‘”You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”‘
‘”There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”‘
‘”The most knowledgeable person in one domain may be the most ignorant in another.”‘
‘”Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.”‘
‘”Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.”‘
‘”But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”‘
‘”Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”‘
‘”Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.”‘
‘”Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities.”‘
‘”Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”‘
‘”Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.”‘
‘”We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.”‘
‘”Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”‘
‘”Humans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd”‘
‘”There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”‘
‘”The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”‘
‘”In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”‘
‘”We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”‘
‘”Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”‘
‘”Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.”‘
‘”You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”‘
‘”If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.”‘
‘”I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”‘
‘”Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.”‘
‘”If we understood the enigmas of life there would be no need for art.”‘
‘”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.”‘
‘”There is no love of life without despair of life.”‘
‘”Life should be lived to the point of tears”‘
‘”Liberty is the right not to lie.”‘
‘”I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.”‘
‘”The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”‘
‘”We all have a weakness for beauty.”‘
‘”To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.”‘
‘”The tragedy is not that we are alone, but that we cannot be. At times I would give anything in the world to no longer be connected by anything to this universe of men.”‘
‘”Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.”‘
‘”We call first truths those we discover after all the others.”‘
‘”Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined.”‘
‘”To know oneself, one should assert oneself.”‘
‘”Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction, therefore it destroys freedom.”‘
‘”Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”‘
‘”Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be, and humor for what they actually are.”‘
‘”Having money is a way of being free of money.”‘
‘”We do not know how to eliminate evil, but we do know how to feed some of the hungry and heal some of the infirmed.”‘
‘”What would become of the world if the condemned started to confide their heartaches to the executioners?”‘
‘”After awhile you could get used to anything.”‘
‘”Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.”‘
‘”A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.”‘
‘”An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.”‘
‘”The innocent is the person who explains nothing”‘
‘”Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children.”‘
‘”When the body is sad, the heart languishes.”‘
‘”We have art in order not to die of life.”‘
‘”Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”‘
‘”Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.”‘
‘”The best revenge you can have on intellectuals is to be madly happy.”‘
‘”A loveless world is a dead world.”‘
‘”To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”‘
‘”There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.”‘
‘”When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”‘
‘”In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”‘
‘”A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.”‘
‘”Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.”‘
‘”Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.”‘
‘”Myths are made for the imagination to breath life into them.”‘
‘”If God did not exist, we should have to invent him. If God did exist, we should have to abolish Him.”‘
‘”You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake so many women make. Find your happiness in yourself.”‘
‘”An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”‘
‘”There is a life and there is a death, and there are beauty and melancholy between.”‘
‘”Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.”‘
‘”The most exhausting effort in my life has been to suppress my own nature in order to make it serve my biggest plans.”‘
‘”The act of love is a confession.”‘
‘”Morality, when formal, devours.”‘
‘”When there is no hope, one must invent hope.”‘
‘”Liberty is dangerous, as hard to get along with as it is exciting.”‘
‘”Integrity has no need of rules.”‘
‘”Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.”‘
‘”A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing , but one who does not believe in what exists.”‘
‘”Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.”‘
‘”If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.”‘
‘”Madness such as this, its like trying to stop a fire with the moisture from a kiss”‘
‘”Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders.”‘
‘”It is not true that the heart wears out – but the body creates this illusion.”‘
‘”Give up the tyranny of female charm.”‘
‘”After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.”‘
‘”Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and this is its whole secret.”‘
‘”Truth and freedom, having few lovers, are demanding mistresses.”‘
‘”Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.”‘
‘”There is a solitude in poverty, but a solitude which restores to each thing its value.”‘
‘”From the evening breeze to this hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth.”‘
‘”No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.”‘
‘”Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.”‘
‘”It is better to burn than to disappear.”‘
‘”Healthy people have a natural skill of avoiding feverish eyes.”‘
‘”If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.”‘
‘”Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.”‘
‘”Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard.”‘
‘”In the end, we would like not to be guilty while at the same time being dispensed of the effort of purifying ourselves. Not enough cynicism and not enough virtue.”‘
‘”Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.”‘
‘”Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.”‘
‘”The laws of nature may be operative up to a certain limit, beyond which they turn against themselves to give birth to the absurd.”‘
‘”Art does not tolerate reason.”‘
‘”If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them they could perceive what they have made of us.”‘
‘”The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.”‘
‘”Love cannot accept what it is. Everywhere on earth it cries out against kindness, compassion, intelligence, everything that leads to compromise. Love demands the impossible, the absolute, the sky on fire, inexhaustible springtime, life after death, and death itself transfigured into eternal life.”‘
‘”Women are all we know of paradise on this earth.”‘
‘”When I look at my life and its secret colors, I feel like bursting into tears.”‘
‘”Cruel irony, the poor man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.”‘
‘”We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”‘
‘”Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.”‘
‘”Truth, like light, is blinding. Lies, on the other hand, are a beautiful dusk, which enhances the value of each object.”‘
‘”Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.”‘,
‘”Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.”‘
‘”Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.”‘
‘”Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.”‘
‘”Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom.”‘
‘”The harshest winter finds an invincible summer in us.”‘
‘”There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence.”‘
‘”You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.”‘
‘”To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.”‘
‘”There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.”‘
‘”Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.”‘
‘”Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”‘
‘”You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us”‘
‘”We have to live and let live in order to create what we are.”‘
‘”Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”‘
‘”To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.”‘
‘”There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.”‘
‘”A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”‘
‘”No code of ethics and no effort are justifiable a priori in the face of the cruel mathematics that command our condition.”‘
‘”Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”‘
‘”Peace is the only battle worth waging.”‘
‘”In order to be created, a work of art must first make use of the dark forces of the soul”‘
‘”The loss of love is the loss of all rights, even though one had them all.”‘
‘”Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.”‘
‘”None of the evils which totalitarianism … claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.”‘
‘”Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful”‘
