Quotes by Albert Camus

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

Dont walk behind me I may not lead. Dont walk in front of me I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship - never.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

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

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

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

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

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

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

“You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.”

“Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?”

“Every achievement is a servitude. It compels us to a higher achievement.”

“He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.”

“Time drips, heavy, slow…”

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”

“Dont lies eventually lead to the truth? And dont all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Dont they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”

“Lying is not only saying what isnt true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true, and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels.”

“False judges are held up in the world’s admiration and I alone know the true ones.”