Quotes from Albert Camus

For me, physical love has always been bound to an irresistible feeling of innocence and joy. Thus, I cannot love in tears but in exaltation.

What we call fundamental truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.

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.

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

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

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love - first to their advantage then to their disadvantage.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgement, it takes place every day.

The struggle to the top is in itself enough to fulfill the human heart. Sisyphus should be regarded as happy.

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.

We are not certain, we are never certain.

Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

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.

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

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