Quotes By 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.

We are all special cases.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Integrity has no need of rules.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.

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

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

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.

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

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.

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.