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Albert Camus Quotes
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209 Quotes on Happiness, Normalcy, Ignorance, Rebellion, and More

Discover the profound wisdom of Albert Camus through his most famous quotes. Explore his thoughts on happiness, normalcy, ignorance, rebellion, and more. Dive into a world of thought-provoking ideas in less than 200 characters.

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and political activist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. Born in Algeria, he grew up in a poor neighborhood and studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. During World War II, he joined the French Resistance and served as editor-in-chief at an outlawed newspaper. After the war, Camus became a renowned figure, giving lectures worldwide. He married twice but engaged in numerous extramarital affairs. With strong political beliefs, he opposed totalitarianism and was part of organizations promoting European integration. In terms of his philosophy, Camus's work influenced absurdism and some consider him an existentialist, although he rejected this label.

Camus's notable works include "The Stranger," "The Plague," "The Myth of Sisyphus," "The Fall," and "The Rebel." Despite being politically active, he maintained a neutral stance during the Algerian War and advocated for a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, which was met with opposition from various parties. Ultimately, Albert Camus left a significant impact on literature and philosophy through his thought-provoking writings and distinct moral standpoint.

✵ 7. November 1913 – 4. January 1960
Albert Camus photo
Albert Camus: 209   quotes 35   likes

Albert Camus Quotes

“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 book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Time

“What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

"Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka"
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Secret

“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 book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

World , Solitude , Heart , Fight

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

Albert Camus

To be found on quotes sites, but always without citation.
Disputed

World , Way

“Knowing whether or not one can live without appeal is all that interests me.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”

Albert Camus

Pablo Picasso said something very similar. Perhaps it is the source? From Herschel B. Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art: "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."
Disputed

Truth , Lie

“Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Myth of Sisyphus

God , Secret

“Great novelists are philosopher novelists — that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

“A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man

Failure , Indifference

“The essential is to cease being free and to obey, in repentance, a greater rogue than oneself. When we are all guilty, that will be democracy.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

Democracy

“In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Love , People , Time

“Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Variant translation: Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
The Rebel (1951)

“The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world — and to pay attention to man.”

Albert Camus

Notebooks (1942–1951)

World

“He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Life , Death , Fear , Animals

“Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

"Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka"
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Understanding , Reality

“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)

Life , Memory , Joy

“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 book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

“Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 4: Rebellion and Art
The Rebel (1951)

Art , History , Nature

“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.”

Albert Camus book Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

"The Artist and His Time"
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960)

Life , World , Art , Freedom

“Let’s not beat around the bush; I love life — that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

Love , Life , Imagination

“The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid. But that doesn't speak to the imagination. What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”

Albert Camus book The Stranger

The Stranger (1942)

Hope , Imagination , Freedom , Chance

“This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right.”

Albert Camus book The Fall

The Fall (1956)

Truth

“All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”

Albert Camus

Ce que, finalement, je sais de plus sûr sur la morale et les obligations des hommes, c'est au football que je le dois.
"Ce que je sais de plus sûr à propos de la moralité et des obligations des hommes, c'est au sport que je le dois", sentence parfois modifiée en : "C'est au football que je le dois !"
As quoted by Jean Noury (November 10, 1965); published in: Archives du Sénat français, Comptes rendus des débats, Volume 4, 1965, p. 1578 (PDF page 28) http://www.senat.fr/comptes-rendus-seances/5eme/pdf/1965/11/s19651110_1551_1598.pdf

Football

“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

Thinking

“Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today.”

Albert Camus book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

God , Problem

“In the end, man is not entirely guilty — he did not start history. Nor is he wholly innocent — he continues it.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

L'homme enfin n'est pas entièrement coupable — il n'a pas commencé l'histoire — ni tout à fait innocent, puisqu'il la continue.
Part 5: Thought at the Meridian (Section: Moderation and Excess)
The Rebel (1951)

History

“Having money is a way of being free of money.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

Avoir de l'argent c'est se libérer de l'argent.
A Happy Death (1971)

Money , Way

“The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. "Everything is permitted" does not mean that nothing is forbidden.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man

“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 book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

Love , Justice , Light , Time

“So many men are deprived of grace. How can one live without grace? One has to try it and do what Christianity never did: be concerned with the damned.”

Albert Camus

Notebooks (1942–1951)

Men

“He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.”

Albert Camus book A Happy Death

A Happy Death (1971)

Men , Dogs , Change

““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 book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

People , Thinking

“Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation

Death , Joy , Happiness

“Real fulfillment, for the man who allows absolutely free rein to his desires, and who much dominate everything, lies in hatred.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion
The Rebel (1951)

“Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.”

Albert Camus

As quoted in Visions from Earth (2004) by James R. Miller, p. 126

Beauty , Spring , Flowers , Autumn

“The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration for order.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion
The Rebel (1951)

“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 book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

God , Justice , Way , Effort

“A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion
The Rebel (1951)

“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 book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

War , People , Stupidity , Way

“Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

Feeling

“If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

Source: The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation, p. 18

History , Success

“I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.”

Albert Camus book Resistance, Rebellion, and Death

"Pessimism and Tyranny"
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960)

Truth , Thinking , Falseness

“Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

“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 book The Plague

The Plague (1947)

Death , War , Disease , Imagination

“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 book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

Intelligence , Courage , Optimism , Sea

“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 book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

Beauty , Hell