Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Albert Camus

Biography : French philosopher, author, and journalist. Nobel Prize in Literature (1957).
Born: 1913 - Died: 1960
Period:
20th century
Place of birth: Algeria
Algeria

Albert Camus - Quotes

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Albert Camus

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.
Albert Camus

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.
Albert Camus

Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.
Albert Camus

freedom

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.
Albert Camus

love

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Albert Camus

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.
Albert Camus

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
Albert Camus

death

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.
Albert Camus

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.
Albert Camus

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
Albert Camus

truth

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
Albert Camus

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
Albert Camus

life

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
Albert Camus /

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
Albert Camus

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
Albert Camus

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
Albert Camus

society

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.
Albert Camus

The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
Albert Camus

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.
Albert Camus

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.
Albert Camus

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
Albert Camus

happiness

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.
Albert Camus

love

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.
Albert Camus

It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
Albert Camus

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
Albert Camus

experience

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
Albert Camus

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
Albert Camus

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.
Albert Camus

death

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Albert Camus

freedom

Albert Camus - Quotes

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