Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Albert Camus (1913–60) was a French novelist, playwright, and philosopher. He was the most prominent French literary talent of his generation. He defined existentialist philosophy and dominated postwar thinking. His work is characterized by clarity, moderation, and tolerance. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.

Camus was born in Mondovi, French Algeria, now the coastal town of Dréan. His upbringing in working-class European milieu provided the setting for many of his works. He joined the French resistance during the World War II and became co-editor (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of the left-wing movement’s bulletin Combat (1944–47.)

Born in Mondovi, French Algeria, now Dréan, Camus’s upbringing in working-class European milieu provided the setting for many of his works. He joined the French resistance during the World War II and became co-editor (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of the left-wing movement’s bulletin Combat (1944–47.)

Camus rose rapidly to fame upon the publication of his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942; The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955) and his first novel L’Étranger (1942; The Outsider, 1946.) These masterpieces discuss his philosophy of existentialism, in particular, the experience of the “absurdity” of human existence or metaphysical nihilism.

Camus’s other notable works include the novel The Plague (1947,) and the essay The Rebel (1951.) His most celebrated play Caligula (1944) envisions the notorious Roman emperor as an actor whose life is a pretense, and whose cruelty and aggression grows from a sense of self-definition. Camus’s other plays The Misunderstanding (1944,) The State of Siege (1948,) and The Just Assassins (1950) further develop his existential and moral themes.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Albert Camus

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Existence

I know of only one duty, and that is to love.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Duty, Love

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Character, Judgment

This is the century of fear.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Fear

The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Principles

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Charm, Manners, Questions

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Fate

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.
—Albert Camus

Art advances between two chasms, which are frivolity and propaganda. On the ridge where the great artist moves forward, every step is an adventure, an extreme risk. In that risk, however, and only there, lies the freedom of art.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Art

Every minute of life carries with it its miraculous value, and its face of eternal youth.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Value of a Day, Time Management

In our wildest aberrations we dream of an equilibrium we have left behind and which we naively expect to find at the end of our errors. Childish presumption which justifies the fact that child-nations, inheriting our follies, are now directing our history.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Historians, History

Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future—and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Relationships

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Twentieth Century

Children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort, man can only propose to diminish, arithmetically, the sufferings of the world.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Justice

Integrity needs no rules.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Character

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.
—Albert Camus

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Problems

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Optimism

We are all exceptional cases. Each man insists on being innocent, even if it means accusing the whole human race, and heaven.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Virtue

I’ll tell you a big secret, my friend: Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Integrity

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.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Evil

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Truth

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Solitude, Weight

What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Christianity, Christians

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.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Work, Futility, Weight, Labor

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will’s impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Freedom

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Personality

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Tyranny

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
—Albert Camus

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
—Albert Camus
Topics: Revolution, Fight

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