Albert Camus Quotes
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The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.
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A person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer to have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.
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I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.
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The mistake that men make is that they do not believe in theater. Otherwise, they would know that every man is allowed to play thecelestial tragedies and to become god. All he has to do is harden his heart.
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Do not be surprised. I do not like writers and I cannot stand their lies. They speak so as not to listen to themselves speak. If they did listen, they would know that they are nothing and then they would no longer be able to speak.
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For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation.
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By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
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The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.
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Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.
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If pimps and thieves everywhere were always punished, honest people would all believe themselves always to be innocent.
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No excuses ever, for anyone; that is my principle at the outset. I deny the good intention, the respectable mistake, the indiscretion, the extenuating circumstance. With me there is no giving of absolution or blessing.
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Myths are made for the imagination to breath life into them.
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Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
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Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
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The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.
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Those who write clearly have readers.
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The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.
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For instance, I never complained that my birthday was overlooked; people were even surprised, with a touch of admiration, by my discretion on this subject. But the reason for my disinterestedness was even more discreet: I longed to be forgotten in order to be able to complain to myself... Once my solitude was thoroughly proved, I could surrender to the charms of a virile self-pity.
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If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
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It is better for the intellectual not to talk all the time. To begin with, it would exhaust him, and, above all, it would keep him from thinking. He must create if he can, first and foremost, especially if his creation does not side-step the problems of his time.
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Nature is a burning and frigid, transparent and limited universe in which nothing is possible but everything is given.
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The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.