There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest -- whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories -- comes afterward. These are games; one must first answer.
ALBERT CAMUS, An Absurd Reasoning
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.
For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists.
ALBERT CAMUS, Resistance, Rebellion and Death
In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality ... we can no longer hope to save everything, but ... we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.
ALBERT CAMUS, Between Hell and Reason
Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.
ALBERT CAMUS, Between Hell and Reason
It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, Words of Wisdom: Albert Camus
Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without ever having asked a clear question.
Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest.
There are some individuals who have too strong a craving, a will, and a nostalgia for happiness ever to reach it. They always retain a bitter and passionate aftertaste, and that's the best they can hope for.
ALBERT CAMUS, letter, Jun. 18, 1938
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
Can this be happiness, this terrifying freedom?
Who would dare speak the word "happiness" in these tortured times? Yet millions today continue to seek happiness. These years have been for them only a prolonged postponement, at the end of which they hope to find that the possibility for happiness has been renewed. Who could blame them? And who could say that they are wrong? What would justice be without the chance for happiness? What purpose would freedom serve, if we had to live in misery?
ALBERT CAMUS, Combat, Dec. 22, 1944
If I think that happiness is possible, I know all too well its hidden nature--and by what wretched paradox, instead of being an excess that would elevate us in dignity, it is a numbness we are only aware of afterward.
ALBERT CAMUS, letter, Jun. 18, 1938
Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradictions; therefore it destroys freedom.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle.
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, Weird Tales, Summer 2011
Man is the only animal that refuses to be what he is.
If I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus
Live to the point of tears.
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
ALBERT CAMUS, A Happy Death
Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Stranger
We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.
ALBERT CAMUS, "Helen's Exile"
Peace is the only battle worth waging.
ALBERT CAMUS, "After Hiroshima: Between Hell and Reason," Combat, Aug. 8, 1945
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
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.
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus
Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, Visions from Earth
The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd
Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.
Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.
A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus
Having money is a way of being free of money.
ALBERT CAMUS, A Happy Death
Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus
Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.
ALBERT CAMUS, Happy Death
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, Great Philosophers Who Failed at Love
Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.
There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.
People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.
When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.
ALBERT CAMUS, The First Man
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, Albert Camus: The Invincible Summer
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.
ALBERT CAMUS, "Helen's Exile"
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other.
Subject-painting isolates, in both time and space, an action that normally would become lost in another action. Thus the painter arrives at a point of stabilization. The really great creative artists are those who, like Piero della Francesca, give the impression that the stabilization has only just taken place, that the projection machine has suddenly stopped dead. All their subjects give the impression that, by some miracle of art, they continue to live, while ceasing to be mortal.
ALBERT CAMUS, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?
ALBERT CAMUS, attributed, The Paradox of Choice
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