Albert Camus Quotes
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Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.
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There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
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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.
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Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it.
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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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If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.
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For a man who loves power, competition from the gods is annoying. I have done away with that. I have proven to these illusory godsthat a man, if he has the will, can practice, without any apprenticeship, their ridiculous trade.
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I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.
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The absurd is sin without God.
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Poverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.
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Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide.
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The work of art is born of the intelligence's refusal to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal.
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The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of the State. The only one I know is freedom of thought and action.
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...we rarely confide in those who are better than we. Rather, we are more inclined to flee their society. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don't want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen. In short, we should like, at the same time, to cease being guilty and yet not to make the effort of cleansing ourselves.
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Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.
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To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
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Believe me, the hardest thing for a man to give up is that which he really doesn't want, after all.
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In short, they were gambling on their luck, and luck is not to be coerced.
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Freedom is not constituted primarily of privileges but of responsibilities.
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And real nobility (that of the heart) is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.
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What would become of the world if the condemned started to confide their heartaches to the executioners?
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Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
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All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics-\-\-in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the divine fable that amuses and blinds, but the terrestrial face, gesture, and drama in which are summed up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral passion.
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There may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones.