Albert Camus Quotes And Sayings

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.

Autumn Is A Second Spring When Every Leaf Is A Flower.

When You Have Really Exhausted An Experience You Always Reverence And Love It.

A Man Without Ethics Is A Wild Beast Loosed Upon This World.

Don't Believe Your Friends When They Ask You To Be Honest With Them. All They Really Want Is To Be Maintained In The Good Opinion They Have Of Themselves.

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.

Those Who Weep For The Happy Periods Which They Encounter In History Acknowledge What They Want; Not The Alleviation But The Silencing Of Misery.

Methods Of Thought Which Claim To Give The Lead To Our World In The Name Of Revolution Have Become, In Reality, Ideologies Of Consent And Not Of Rebellion.

Some People Talk In Their Sleep. Lecturers Talk While Other People Sleep.

To Insure The Adoration Of A Theorem For Any Length Of Time, Faith Is Not Enough, A Police Force Is Needed As Well.

Every Man, And For Stronger Reasons, Every Artist, Wants To Be Recognized. So Do I.

Truth, Like Light, Blinds. Falsehood, On The Contrary, Is A Beautiful Twilight That Enhances Every Object.

After All Manner Of Professors Have Done Their Best For Us, The Place We Are To Get Knowledge Is In Books. The True University Of These Days Is A Collection Of Books.

You Cannot Create Experience. You Must Undergo It.

Alas, After A Certain Age Every Man Is Responsible For His Face.

Every Revolutionary Ends Up Either By Becoming An Oppressor Or A Heretic.

What The World Requires Of The Christians Is That They Should Continue To Be Christians.

It Is Normal To Give Away A Little Of One's Life In Order Not To Lose It All.

Culture: The Cry Of Men In Face Of Their Destiny.

Man Wants To Live, But It Is Useless To Hope That This Desire Will Dictate All His Actions.

To Abandon Oneself To Principles Is Really To Die - And To Die For An Impossible Love Which Is The Contrary Of Love.

To Assert In Any Case That A Man Must Be Absolutely Cut Off From Society Because He Is Absolutely Evil Amounts To Saying That Society Is Absolutely Good, And No-one In His Right Mind Will Believe This Today.

We Call First Truths Those We Discover After All The Others.

But What Is Happiness Except The Simple Harmony Between A Man And The Life He Leads?

Those Who Write Clearly Have Readers, Those Who Write Obscurely Have Commentators.

How Hard, How Bitter It Is To Become A Man!

To Govern Means To Pillage, As Everyone Knows.

The Absurd Depends As Much On Man As On The World. For The Moment, It Is All That Links Them Together.

Violence Is Both Unavoidable And Unjustifiable.

I Am Not Made For Politics Because I Am Incapable Of Wanting Or Accepting The Death Of The Adversary.

To Cut Short The Question Of The Law Of Retaliation, We Must Note That Even In Its Primitive Form It Can Operate Only Between Two Individuals Of Whom One Is Absolutely Innocent, And The Other Absolutely Guilty. The Victim, To Be Sure, Is Innocent. But Can The Society That Is Supposed To Represent The Victim Lay Claim To Innocence?

I Should Like To Be Able To Love My Country And Still Love Justice.

There Is No Fate That Cannot Be Surmounted By Scorn.

Judging Whether Life Is Or Is Not Worth Living Amounts To Answering The Fundamental Question Of Philosophy.

At 30 A Man Should Know Himself Like The Palm Of His Hand, Know The Exact Number Of His Defects And Qualities, Know How Far He Can Go, Foretell His Failures - Be What He Is. And, Above All, Accept These Things.

We Are All Special Cases.

I Know Of Only One Duty, And That Is To Love.

In Order To Exist Just Once In The World, It Is Necessary Never Again To Exist.

The Desire For Possession Is Insatiable, To Such A Point That It Can Survive Even Love Itself. To Love, Therefore, Is To Sterilize The Person One Loves.

The Society Based On Production Is Only Productive, Not Creative.

All Great Deeds And All Great Thoughts Have A Ridiculous Beginning. Great Works Are Often Born On A Street Corner Or In A Restaurant's Revolving Door.

Against Eternal Injustice, Man Must Assert Justice, And To Protest Against The Universe Of Grief, He Must Create Happiness.

You Have To Be Very Rich Or Very Poor To Live Without A Trade.

The Artist Forges Himself To The Others, Midway Between The Beauty He Cannot Do Without And The Community He Cannot Tear Himself Away From. That Is Why True Artists Scorn Nothing: They Are Obliged To Understand Rather Than To Judge.

I Grew Up With The Sea, And Poverty For Me Was Sumptuous; Then I Lost The Sea And Found All Luxuries Gray And Poverty Unbearable.

Every Time Somebody Speaks Of My Honesty, There Is Someone Who Quivers Inside Me.

A Guilty Conscience Needs To Confess. A Work Of Art Is A Confession.

Integrity Has No Need Of Rules.

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.

Without Freedom, No Art; Art Lives Only On The Restraints It Imposes On Itself, And Dies Of All Others.

Men Are Never Really Willing To Die Except For The Sake Of Freedom: Therefore They Do Not Believe In Dying Completely.