Quotes By Albert Camus

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.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

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

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.

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

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

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

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

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

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.