Quotes By Albert Camus

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

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.

You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

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... inside ourselves.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

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.

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.