Albert Camus Quotes
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Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.
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To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
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What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.
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Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
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I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.
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In normal times all of us know, whether consciously or not, that there is no love which can't be bettered; nevertheless, we reconcile ourselves more or less easily to the fact that ours has never risen above the average.
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Lucifer also has died with God, and from his ashes has arisen a spiteful demon who does not even understand the object of his venture.
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I have not stopped loving that which is sacred in this world.
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Moreover, most people, assuming they had not altogether abandoned religious observances, or did not combine them naively with a thoroughly immoral way of living, had replace normal religious practice by more or less extravagant superstitions.
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The day of my arrest I was first put in a room where there were already several other prisoners, most of them Arabs. They laughed when they saw me. Then they asked what I was in for. I said I'd killed an Arab and they were all silent.
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We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
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A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.
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Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
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The essential is to cease being free and to obey, in repentance, a greater rogue than oneself. When we are all guilty, that will be democracy.
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I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.
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Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth.
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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.
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A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.
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We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.
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Obstinacy alone is not a virtue.
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No one who lives in the sunlight of gratitude that things aren't worse makes a failure of his or her life.
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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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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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We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice imaginable in the world which is so obviously unjust, make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But tasks are called superhuman when men take a long time to complete them, that is all.