Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Albert Camus
190 quotes
“An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even before the bomb, one did not breathe too easily in this tortured world. Now we are given a new source of anguish; it has all the promise of being our greatest anguish ever. There can be no doubt that humanity is being offered its last chance. Perhaps this is an occasion for the newspapers to print a special edition. More likely, it should be cause for a certain amount of reflection and a great deal of silence.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Query: How to contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting room; by remaining on one's balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by travelling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by queueing at the box-office of theatres and then not booking a seat.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A scourge is not on a human scale, and so people say it isn't real; it's a bad dream that will pass. But is doesn't always pass, and, from bad dream to bad dream, it's the humans who pass, and the humanists first, because they didn't heed the warnings.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?" "I don't know. My... my code of morals, perhaps." "Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one...”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'I'm glad to know he's [Paneloux] better than his sermon.'”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.'”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He kept the middle way, that's all: he was the type of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order - which is the kind that wears best.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At that moment he knew what his mother was thinking, and that she loved him. But he knew, too, that to love someone means relatively little; or, rather, that love is never wrong enough to find the word befitting it.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...there are more things to admire in men than to despise.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is a rebel? A man who says no.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Nietzsche and Hegel serve as alibis to the masters of Dachau and Karaganda, that does not condemn their entire philosophy. But it does lead to the suspicion that one aspect of their thought, or of their logic, can lead to these appalling conclusions.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The real saint", Baudelaire pretends to think, "is he who flogs and kills people for their own good." His argument will be heard. A race of real saints is beginning to spread over the earth for the purposes of confirming these curious conclusions about rebellion.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live; in fact, for the humiliated.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again postpone to a later time.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I rebel — therefore we exist.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration for order.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Real fulfillment, for the man who allows absolutely free rein to his desires, and who much dominate everything, lies in hatred.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself. It was butting one's head against a wall.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion; also quoted in Albert Camus : The Invincible Summer (1958) by Albert Maquet, p. 86; a remark made about the Marquis de Sade
“Art is the activity that exalts and denies simultaneously. "No artist tolerates reality," says Nietzsche.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The artist reconstructs the world to his plan.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source