Albert Camus Quotes

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and that is its whole secret.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

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

After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.

To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.

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.

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

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.

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.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

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

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

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.

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.

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.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

Heroism is accessible. Happiness is more difficult.

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

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. I began not by feeling torn, but in plenitude.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

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

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

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

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

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.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

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.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.

No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

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

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one’s landlady.

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

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.

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.