Albert Camus Quotes
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One cannot be a part-time nihilist.
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Absurd- that is the light mind that establishes its own borders.
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It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist.
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I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.
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I have no friends, I only have accomplices now. On the other hand, my accomplices are more numerous than my friends: they are the human race.
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Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.
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Somebody has to have the last word. If not, every argument could be opposed by another and we'd never be done with it.
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Liberty is the right not to lie.
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... here, where the gaze is stopped everywhere, the whole earth is designed so that the face turns upward and the gaze implores. Oh! I hate this world where we are reduced to God.
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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
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My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… 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. Truly yours, Albert Camus
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Imagination offers people consolation for what they cannot be, and humor for what they actually are.
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... it is true that I do not respect human life more than I respect my own life. And if it is easy for me to kill, that is because it is difficult for me to die.
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Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.
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And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.
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Morality, when formal, devours.
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The struggle to the top alone will make a human heart SWELL.
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There can be no question of masking the evidence, of suppressing the absurd by denying one of the terms of its equation. It is essential to know whether one can live with it or whether, on the other hand, logic commands one to die of it.
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We are all special cases.
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Happiness is not everything and men have their duties. Mine is to find my mother, a homeland.
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Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.
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Truth, like light, is blinding. Lies, on the other hand, are a beautiful dusk, which enhances the value of each object.
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To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
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Children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort, man can only propose to diminish, arithmetically, the sufferings of the world.