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Albert Camus Quotes

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.
The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.
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.
Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
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.
Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
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.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
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.
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.
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
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 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.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
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.
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.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
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.
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.
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.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
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.
To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.