Quotes By Albert Camus

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.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

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.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

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.

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

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.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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.

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

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.