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Albert Camus

French writer who portrayed the human condition as isolated in an absurd world (1913-1960)

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'It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.
A person I knew use to divide human beings into three categories Those who prefer have nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden.
A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.
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.
An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.
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.
Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.
Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.
Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
Friendship often ends in love but love in friendship--never.
Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.
He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.
History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.
How many crimes are committed simply because their authors could not endure being wrong.
I enjoyed my own nature to the fullest, and we all know that there lies happiness, although, to soothe one another mutually, we occasionally pretend to condemn such joys as selfishness.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
I love my country too much to be a nationalist.
I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.
I sometimes think of what future historians will say of us. A single sentence will suffice for modern man he fornicated and read the papers.
If there is a sin against life, it consist perhaps not so much in despairing of life as hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. Albert Camus
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.
If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
In the depth of winter, I learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.
In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
In the vast reaches of the dry, cold night, thousands of stars were constantly appearing, and their sparkling icicles, loosened at once, began to slip gradually toward the horizon.
Integrity has no need of rules.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
It is terrifying to see how easily, in certain people, all dignity collapses. Yet when you think about it, this is quite normal since they only maintain this dignity by constantly striving against their own nature.
It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Live to the point of tears.
Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
Real generosity toward the future consists in giving all to what is present.
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
The absurd is born of the confrontation between the human call and the unreasonable silence of the world.
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
The need to be right -- the sign of a vulgar mind.
The temptation shared by all forms of intelligence cynicism.
The truth, as the light, makes blind.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.
There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.
What is a rebel A man who says no.
What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared For there to be an equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal, who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him, and who from that moment onward had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.
When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
Without freedom, no art art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.
You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
You know what charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

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