We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.
— Albert Camus
The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives... inside ourselves.
The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live as if there isn't and to die to find out that there is.
We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
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.
The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.
The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.
Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.
One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.
The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.
It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.
Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.
As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.
Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.
What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation.
I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.
Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.
Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.
The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
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.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
Methods of thought which claim to give the lead to our world in the name of revolution have become, in reality, ideologies of consent and not of rebellion.
Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood - never.
To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.
Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.
In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.
