Albert Camus Quotes
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A régime Nazism which invented a biological foreign policy was obviously acting against its own best interests. But at least it obeyed its own particular logic.
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The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.
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I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.
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I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It’s not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.
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To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
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This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.
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Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.
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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.
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If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.
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The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
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Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.
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We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.
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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.
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Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
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To create today is to create dangerously. Any publication is an act, and that act exposes one to the passions of an age that forgives nothing.
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The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.
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I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.
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I have not stopped loving that which is sacred in this world.
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Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.
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When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though the war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
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'This is the truth,' we say. 'You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right.'
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A craving for freedom and independence is generated only in a man still living on hope.
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... unhappiness is like marriage. We believe we chose it, but then it is choosing us. That is how it is, we can do nothing about it.
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The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.