Albert Camus Quotes

I rebel; therefore I exist.

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

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

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

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

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

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one’s landlady.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

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

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

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.