Albert Camus quote: "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."

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
ALBERT CAMUS

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood ...
ALBERT CAMUS

Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
ALBERT CAMUS

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.
ALBERT CAMUS

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither t...
ALBERT CAMUS

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a ...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

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

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

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will nev...
ALBERT CAMUS

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.
ALBERT CAMUS

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of phil...
ALBERT CAMUS

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into ...
ALBERT CAMUS

In order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common ...
ALBERT CAMUS

I grew up with the sea, and poverty for me was sumptuous; then I lost the sea and found all luxuries...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them togethe...
ALBERT CAMUS

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?
ALBERT CAMUS

How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!
ALBERT CAMUS

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.
ALBERT CAMUS

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most ...
ALBERT CAMUS

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the c...
ALBERT CAMUS

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.
ALBERT CAMUS

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.
ALBERT CAMUS

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know...
ALBERT CAMUS

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it...
ALBERT CAMUS

We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
ALBERT CAMUS

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
ALBERT CAMUS

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
ALBERT CAMUS

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the ot...
ALBERT CAMUS

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Excep...
ALBERT CAMUS

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
ALBERT CAMUS

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two ...
ALBERT CAMUS

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and ...
ALBERT CAMUS

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.
ALBERT CAMUS

We are all special cases.
ALBERT CAMUS

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform ...
ALBERT CAMUS

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me f...
ALBERT CAMUS

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hopi...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.
ALBERT CAMUS

Charm is a way of getting the answer 'Yes' without asking a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
ALBERT CAMUS

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.
ALBERT CAMUS

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in ...
ALBERT CAMUS

You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.
ALBERT CAMUS

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyph...
ALBERT CAMUS

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the comm...
ALBERT CAMUS

I was born poor and without religion, under a happy sky, feeling harmony, not hostility, in nature. ...
ALBERT CAMUS

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.
ALBERT CAMUS

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.
ALBERT CAMUS

Integrity has no need of rules.
ALBERT CAMUS

Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.
ALBERT CAMUS

What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.
ALBERT CAMUS

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
ALBERT CAMUS

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that...
ALBERT CAMUS

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his t...
ALBERT CAMUS

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say th...
ALBERT CAMUS

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
ALBERT CAMUS

I don't want to be a genius--I have enough problems just trying to be a man.
ALBERT CAMUS

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must underg...
ALBERT CAMUS

There are crimes of passion and crimes of logic. The boundary between them is not clearly defined.
ALBERT CAMUS

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I lik...
ALBERT CAMUS

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
ALBERT CAMUS

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never liv...
ALBERT CAMUS

Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.
ALBERT CAMUS

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
W...
ALBERT CAMUS

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep
ALBERT CAMUS

From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly ...
ALBERT CAMUS

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
ALBERT CAMUS

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS

I used to advertise my loyalty and I don't believe there is a single person I loved that I didn't ev...
ALBERT CAMUS

I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know thi...
ALBERT CAMUS

Personne n'est capable réellement de penser à personne, fût-ce dans le pire des malheurs. Car pen...
ALBERT CAMUS

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man c...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Live to the point of tears.
ALBERT CAMUS

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Musi...
ALBERT CAMUS

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me f...
ALBERT CAMUS

The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feelin...
ALBERT CAMUS

If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that ...
ALBERT CAMUS

The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor f...
ALBERT CAMUS

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who hav...
ALBERT CAMUS

We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know...
ALBERT CAMUS

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We con...
ALBERT CAMUS

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man c...
ALBERT CAMUS

To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.
ALBERT CAMUS

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a person and life they lead.
ALBERT CAMUS

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.
ALBERT CAMUS

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it,...
ALBERT CAMUS

If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own li...
ALBERT CAMUS

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
ALBERT CAMUS

Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don't walk behind me, I may not lead; Walk beside me, a...
ALBERT CAMUS

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside ...
ALBERT CAMUS

My conclusion will be simple. It will consist of saying, in the very midst of the sound and the fury...
ALBERT CAMUS

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can r...
ALBERT CAMUS

At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the out...
ALBERT CAMUS

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offers us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that w...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
ALBERT CAMUS

Do not wait for the last judgement. It takes place every day.
ALBERT CAMUS

Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves. Perhaps then , if we listen attentively we shal...
ALBERT CAMUS

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.
ALBERT CAMUS

It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just a...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to b...
ALBERT CAMUS

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death i...
ALBERT CAMUS

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by you...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

You can't create experience. You must undergo it.
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in ...
ALBERT CAMUS

The only conception of freedom I can have is that of the prisoner or the individual in the midst of ...
ALBERT CAMUS

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
ALBERT CAMUS

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the r...
ALBERT CAMUS

Children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort, man can onl...
ALBERT CAMUS

If there is sin against life, it consists in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable g...
ALBERT CAMUS

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of phil...
ALBERT CAMUS

In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do...
ALBERT CAMUS

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus h...
ALBERT CAMUS

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations whi...
ALBERT CAMUS

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dread...
ALBERT CAMUS

What is a rebel? A man who says no.
ALBERT CAMUS

The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value whi...
ALBERT CAMUS

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
ALBERT CAMUS

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not...
ALBERT CAMUS

Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the ...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely ev...
ALBERT CAMUS

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die -- and to die for an impossible love which is the ...
ALBERT CAMUS

God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.
ALBERT CAMUS

The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. Wh...
ALBERT CAMUS

We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unle...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

Our civilization survives in the complacency of cowardly or malignant minds -- a sacrifice to the va...
ALBERT CAMUS

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.
ALBERT CAMUS

The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we c...
ALBERT CAMUS

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood ...
ALBERT CAMUS

When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nosta...
ALBERT CAMUS

The innocent is the person who explains nothing.
ALBERT CAMUS

More and more, when faced with the world of men, the only reaction is one of individualism. Man alon...
ALBERT CAMUS

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an ac...
ALBERT CAMUS

Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, ...
ALBERT CAMUS

Instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let ...
ALBERT CAMUS

To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not t...
ALBERT CAMUS

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that...
ALBERT CAMUS

As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the moon, which writes Arab...
ALBERT CAMUS

Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
ALBERT CAMUS

We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity.
ALBERT CAMUS

It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it.
ALBERT CAMUS

After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those ...
ALBERT CAMUS

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no ar...
ALBERT CAMUS

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case...
ALBERT CAMUS

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.
ALBERT CAMUS

In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expec...
ALBERT CAMUS

Alas after a certain age, every man is responsible for his own face.
ALBERT CAMUS

Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same ...
ALBERT CAMUS

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within ...
ALBERT CAMUS

We are not certain, we are never certain. If we were we could reach some conclusions, and we could, ...
ALBERT CAMUS

The most eloquent eulogy of capitalism was made by its greatest enemy. Marx is only anti-capitalist ...
ALBERT CAMUS

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, however calcula...
ALBERT CAMUS

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself, he...
ALBERT CAMUS

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, ...
ALBERT CAMUS

In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.
ALBERT CAMUS

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
ALBERT CAMUS

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balanc...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinai...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

On certain mornings, as we turn a corner,
an exquisite dew falls on our heart
and then vanishe...
ALBERT CAMUS

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
ALBERT CAMUS

That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means.
ALBERT CAMUS

True debauchery is liberating because it creates no obligations. In it you possess only yourself; he...
ALBERT CAMUS

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

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others
ALBERT CAMUS

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

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
ALBERT CAMUS

Oh she's nice, she's kind, innocent too. She's probably pretty, the right one for you. So just forge...
ALBERT CAMUS

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
ALBERT CAMUS

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spa...
ALBERT CAMUS

What is a rebel? A man who says no
ALBERT CAMUS

Resist no temptation: a guilty conscience is more honorable than regret
ALBERT CAMUS

When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.
ALBERT CAMUS

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.

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Albert Camus

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.

Albert Camus

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