Peace is the only battle worth waging.
– Albert Camus
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
– Albert Camus
Integrity has no need of rules.
– Albert Camus
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
– Albert Camus
There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.
– Albert Camus
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk
beside me and be my friend.
– Albert Camus
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
– Albert Camus
I rebel; therefore I exist.
– Albert Camus
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do
as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
– Albert Camus
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
– Albert Camus
Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.
– Albert Camus
If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that
all humanity does not suffice to assuage the thirst for blood, the path of destruction must
lead to universal annihilation.
– Albert Camus
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
– Albert Camus
My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.
– Albert Camus
Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.
– Albert Camus
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
– Albert Camus
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize
that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.
– Albert Camus
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
– Albert Camus
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
– Albert Camus
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky,
the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had
clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise… that denseness and that
strangeness of the world is absurd.
– Albert Camus
I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.
– Albert Camus
Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.
– Albert Camus
We are all born mad, some remain so.
– Albert Camus
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.
– Albert Camus
The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
– Albert Camus
Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity
that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
– Albert Camus
Let’s not beat around the bush – I love life. That’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I
am incapable of imagining what is not life.
– Albert Camus
There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly
defined.
– Albert Camus
We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and
we could, at last, make others take us seriously.
– Albert Camus
Culture: The cry of men in face of their destiny.
– Albert Camus
A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be
anything but bad.
– Albert Camus
What is a rebel? A man who says no.
– Albert Camus
We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash
them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.
– Albert Camus
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
– Albert Camus
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
– Albert Camus
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides
the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.
– Albert Camus
The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.
– Albert Camus
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two
ideas must find their limits in each other.
– Albert Camus
Life can be magnificent and overwhelming – that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love,
or danger it would almost be easy to live.
– Albert Camus
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.
– Albert Camus
If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say
that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.
– Albert Camus
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
– Albert Camus
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
– Albert Camus
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
– Albert Camus
Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what
they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
– Albert Camus
Live to the point of tears.
– Albert Camus
Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory. Everything
is forgotten, even great love.
– Albert Camus
The need to be right – the sign of a vulgar mind.
– Albert Camus
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
– Albert Camus
Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.
– Albert Camus
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
– Albert Camus
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
– Albert Camus
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in
hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
– Albert Camus
Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction: Therefore it destroys
freedom.
– Albert Camus
Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of
being.
– Albert Camus
We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.
– Albert Camus
It’s better to bet on this life than on the next.
– Albert Camus
Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your
sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a
right only to their skepticism.
– Albert Camus
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
– Albert Camus
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.
– Albert Camus
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
– Albert Camus
But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
– Albert Camus
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize
or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be
considered calmly.
– Albert Camus
I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place
every day.
– Albert Camus
Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn’t desire is the hardest thing
in the world.
– Albert Camus
Since we’re all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.
– Albert Camus
Believe me, religions are on the wrong track the moment they moralize and fulminate
commandments. God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided
by ourselves.
– Albert Camus
We must learn how to lend ourselves to dreaming when dreams lend themselves to us.
– Albert Camus
A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies
in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which
refuses to be classified as an object.
– Albert Camus
In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But
we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day.
– Albert Camus
Fate is not in man but around him.
– Albert Camus
To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
– Albert Camus
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
– Albert Camus
When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.
– Albert Camus
So many men are deprived of grace. How can one live without grace? One has to try it and
do what Christianity never did: Be concerned with the damned.
– Albert Camus
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very
existence is an act of rebellion.
– Albert Camus
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.
– Albert Camus
Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.
– Albert Camus
You know what charm is: A way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear
question.
– Albert Camus
Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.
– Albert Camus
I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about
what didn’t.
– Albert Camus
If the world were clear, art would not exist.
– Albert Camus
I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in
it has a meaning and that is man, because he is the only creature to insist on having one.
– Albert Camus
One recognizes one’s course by discovering the paths that stray from it.
– Albert Camus
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from
them.
– Albert Camus
A loveless world is a dead world.
– Albert Camus
Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further
developments, a future, and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have
relationships with other people.
– Albert Camus
One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.
– Albert Camus
Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.
– Albert Camus
A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.
– Albert Camus
I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of great emotion, well, he
leaves me cold.
– Albert Camus
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
– Albert Camus
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.
– Albert Camus
With rebellion, awareness is born.
– Albert Camus
I would rather live my life as if there is a god and die to find out there isn’t, than live my life
as if there isn’t and die to find out there is.
– Albert Camus
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will
never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
– Albert Camus
To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.
We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should
die.
– Albert Camus
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
– Albert Camus
People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.
– Albert Camus
After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge
is in books.
– Albert Camus
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
– Albert Camus
Having money is a way of being free of money.
– Albert Camus
Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
– Albert Camus
Life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great
minds have taken as their starting point.
– Albert Camus