Albert Camus Quotes
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The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.
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Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.
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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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What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.
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Only he who is uncompromising as to his rights maintains the sense of duty.
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Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that is celebrated with champagne...Oh no! It's a...long distance race, quite solitary and very exhausting.
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Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and this is its whole secret.
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The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.
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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.
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There is no frontier between being and appearing.
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No ends, simply means.
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The look of success, when it is worn a certain way, would infuriate a jackass.
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I am too far away from what I love and my distance is without remedy.
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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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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 absurd is sin without God.
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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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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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There are plagues, and there are victims, and it's the duty of good men not to join forces with the plagues.
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Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time.
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The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.
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More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.
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Mistakes are joyful, truth infernal.
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Even when one sits in the prisoner's dock, it is interesting to hear talk about oneself.