Albert Camus Quotes

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Albert Camus

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : November 7, 1913

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Albert Camus

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

Albert Camus

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

Albert Camus

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

Albert Camus

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

Albert Camus

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

Albert Camus

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.

Albert Camus

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.

Albert Camus

I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.

Albert Camus

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

Albert Camus

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

Albert Camus

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Albert Camus

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

Albert Camus

To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.

Albert Camus

After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion.

Albert Camus

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

Albert Camus

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death... these are things that unite us all.

Albert Camus