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

God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease.
Albert Camus
Topics: Sympathy

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

We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.
Albert Camus
Topics: Perfection

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 is a rebel? A man who says no.
Albert Camus
Topics: Revolution

When one has extensively pondered about men, as a career or as a vocation, one sometimes feels nostalgic for primates. At least they do not have ulterior motives.
Albert Camus
Topics: Mankind, Man

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

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.
Albert Camus
Topics: Passion

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.
Albert Camus
Topics: Virtue, Virtues

The rebel can never find peace. He knows what is good and, despite himself, does evil. The value which supports him is never given to him once and for all—he must fight to uphold it, unceasingly.
Albert Camus
Topics: Revolution, Peace

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
Albert Camus
Topics: Government

Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked or made use of. As for being understood, never.
Albert Camus
Topics: Understanding

That must be wonderful; I have no idea of what it means.
Albert Camus
Topics: Communication

The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
Albert Camus
Topics: Art

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
Albert Camus
Topics: Philosophy

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

Integrity has no need of rules.
Albert Camus
Topics: Character, Integrity, Honesty

Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
Albert Camus
Topics: Obedience, Violence

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
Albert Camus
Topics: Creativity, Life, To Be Born Everyday

If only nature is real and if, in nature, only desire and destruction are legitimate, then, in that all humanity does not suffice to assuage the thirst for blood, the path of destruction must lead to universal annihilation.
Albert Camus
Topics: Nature

The world in which we were called to exist was an absurd world, and there was no other in which we could take refuge.
Albert Camus
Topics: World

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

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.
Albert Camus
Topics: Pride, Defects

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, that it is inside ourselves.
Albert Camus
Topics: Peace

Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.
Albert Camus
Topics: Forgiveness

The absurd is sin without God.
Albert Camus

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus
Topics: Spring, Autumn, One liners

Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don’t go in for politics.
Albert Camus
Topics: Politics

Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and just be my friend.
Albert Camus
Topics: Follow, Friendship, Friend, Feelings, Friends, Now

To live is to hurt others, and through others, to hurt oneself. Cruel earth! How can we manage not to touch anything? To find what ultimate exile?
Albert Camus
Topics: Injury

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