Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist, born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, French Algeria. He was the second child of a French family who had settled in Algeria.
Camus grew up in poverty, but was able to attend school thanks to a scholarship. He was an excellent student, and after completing his studies, he became a teacher.
During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance and worked as an editor of the underground newspaper Combat. He also wrote his first novel, The Stranger, which was published in 1942 and became an instant classic.
Camus went on to write several other works, including The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, and The Rebel. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
In addition to his writing, Camus was also known for his philosophical and political views. He was a strong advocate for human rights, and was critical of both communism and capitalism.
Camus died on January 4, 1960, in a car accident near Sens, France, at the age of 46. His work continues to be studied and admired by readers and scholars around the world.
The profound thoughts of Albert Camus, we discover a treasure trove of wisdom on freedom and morality. Here are some insightful quotes that illuminate the complexities of human existence.
Albert Camus Quotes Absurdism
1. “O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.”
2. “Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep”
3. “I would like to be able to breathe— to be able to love her by memory or fidelity. But my heart aches. I love you continuously, intensely.”
4. “The only serious question in life is whether to kill yourself or not.”
5. “To create is to live twice.”
6. “It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.”
7. “It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning”
8. “My soul’s a burden to me, I’ve had enough of it. I’m eager to be in that country, where the sun kills every question. I don’t belong here.”
9. “We don’t have the time to completely be ourselves. We only have the room to be happy.”
10. “How unbearable, for women, is the tenderness which a man can give them without love. For men, how bittersweet this is.”
11. “Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.”
12. “And I fired four more times at a lifeless body and the bullets sank in without leaving a mark. And it was like giving four sharp knocks at the door of unhappiness.”
13. “It would take patience to wait for the Last Judgement. But that’s it, we’re in a hurry.”
14. “What we call basic truths are simply the ones we discovered after all the others.”
15. “To will is to stir up paradoxes”
16. “In order to reveal to all eyes what he was made of, I wanted to break open the handsome wax-figure I presented everywhere.”
17. “It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.”
18. “There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.”
19. “Yes, everything is simple. It’s people who complicate things.”
20. “The most knowledgeable person in one domain may be the most ignorant in another.”
Albert Camus Quotes Absurdism
21. “There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.”
22. “The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.”
23. “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
24. “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
25. “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.”
26. “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.”
27. “The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.”
28. “The Four Conditions of Happiness: Life in the open air, Love for another being,Freedom from ambition, Creation”
29. “The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”
30. “Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth”
31. “Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.”
32. “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
33. “Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”
34. “Life is a sum of all your choices”. So, what are you doing today?”
35. “Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it’s meaningless.”
36. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
37. “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.”
38. “By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.”
39. “The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
40. “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
Albert Camus Quotes on Life
41. “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.”
42. “I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”
43. “A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world”
44. “Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”
45. “We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.”
46. “When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”
47. “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
48. “You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
49.“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”
50. “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
51. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
52. “The need to be right – the sign of a vulgar mind.”
53. “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
54. “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”
55. “You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
56. “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
57. “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
58. “Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
59. “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.”
60. “Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.”
Albert Camus Quotes on Love
61. “Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never”.
62. “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?”
63. “But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.”
64. “Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”
65. “Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.”
66. “Yes, everything is simple. It is people who complicate things.”
67. “Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”
68. “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
69. “We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.”
70. “I know of only one duty, and that is to love.”
71. “Life can be magnificent and overwhelming – that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.”
72. “Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.”
73. “No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
74. “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
75. “Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?”
76. “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.”
77. “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.”
78.“There is no sun without the shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing.”
79. “If one believes Homer, Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition, however, he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. I see no contradiction in this.
80. “What distinguishes modern sensibility from classical sensibility is that the latter thrives on moral problems and the former on metaphysical problems. ”
Albert Camus Quotes Existentialism
81. “What, in fact, is the absurd man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning.”
82. “The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end.”
83. “If I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.”
84. “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said.”
85. “Existence is illusory or it is eternal.”
86. “Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity. And diversity is the home of art.”
87. “At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.”
88. “How can one fail to realize that in this vulnerable universe everything that is human and solely human assumes a more vivid meaning?”
89. “There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”
90.“If it were sufficient to love, things would be too easy.”
91. “Creating is living doubly . . . Creation is the great mime.”
92. “A feeling normally as individual as the ache of separation from those one loves suddenly became a feeling in which all shared alike and-together with fear-the greatest affliction of the long period of exile that lay ahead.”
93. “The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”
94. “Hostile to the past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom men’s justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars.”
95. “To fight abstraction you must have something of it in your own make-up . . . Abstraction for him was all that stood in the way of happiness.”
96. “Thus the first thing that plague brought to our town was exile.”
97. “What we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
98. “Thus each of us had to be content to live only for the day, alone under the vast indifference of the sky.”
99. “Then came the second phase of conflict, tears and pleadings—abstraction, in a word. In those fever-hot, nerve-ridden sickrooms crazy scenes took place.”
100. “The truth is that nothing is less sensational than pestilence, and by reason of their very duration great misfortunes are monotonous.”