Quotes by Albert Camus

The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion, therefore, has no meaning except within our own Western society.

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning.

A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?

Who, cher monsieur, will sleep on the floor for us? Whether I am capable of it myself? Look, Id like to be and I shall be. Yes, we shall all be capable of it one day, and that will be salvation.

The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter - these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable

It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.

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

But it is obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis. To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.

. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis.To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.

You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.

Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. If they are happy by surprise, they find themselves disabled, unhappy to be deprived of their unhappiness.

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

...luck is not to be coerced.

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

There is something divine in mindless beauty.

One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesnt even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.

You see, Mersualt, all the misery and cruelty of our civilisation can be measured by this one stupid axiom: happy nations have no history.

Sometimes, from beyond the skycrapers, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.