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Quotes by Albert Camus

French existentialist author & philosopher (1913 - 1960)

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

CP Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

CP Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.

CP He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

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

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

Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.

CP There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

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

CP What is a rebel? A man who says no.

CP You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

CP 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

CP A slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown.

CP A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to bet better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.

CP Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day.

CP We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

CP 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.

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

CP In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

CP In the depth of winter, I learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

CP I have never been able, really, to regret anything in all my life. I have always been far much too absorbed in the present moment or the immediate future to think back.

CP Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.

CP 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.

CP 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.

CP Live to the point of tears.

CP Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

CP There are always reasons for murdering a man. But there is no justification for his existence.

CP I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

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

CP Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the inteligent or the dull.

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

CP But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

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

CP It is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear.

CP All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.

CP I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically gettin killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.

CP There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide.

CP Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

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

If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.