Albert Camus Quotes - Page 26

• It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist.

  Albert Camus

  Intellectual, Way, West

  Albert Camus (2012). “Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays”, p.170, Vintage

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• But too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance, even if they have to trample somewhat on the one who has been there so long.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Long, People

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Fall”, p.114, Vintage

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• 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

  Reality, Our World, Uprising

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.247, Vintage

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• When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

  Albert Camus

  War, Stupid, Long

  Albert Camus (1960). “Collected fiction”

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• In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions.

  Albert Camus

  Dream, Taken, Men

  ALBERT CAMUS (1971). “NOBEL PRIZE LIBRARY”

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Believe, Doubt, Fields

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.10, Vintage

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• In a universe suddenly divested of illusion and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land.

  Albert Camus

  Memories, Fear, Home

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.6, Vintage

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• These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Facts, Study

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.3, Vintage

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• Men like us are good and proud and strong...if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses.

  Albert Camus

  Strong, Men, Honor

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• We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot.

  Albert Camus

  Sea, Water, Silence

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• People believe a man is in distress because his loved one dies in one day. But his real pain is less futile: it is that he finds out that sadness too does not last. Even pain has no meaning.

  Albert Camus

  Pain, Real, Believe

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• 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.

  Albert Camus

  Elements, Unreality, Abstraction

  "The Plague". Book by Albert Camus, 1947.

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• Because,' Cormery went on, 'when I was very young, very foolish, and very much alone ... you paid attention to me and, without seeming to, you opened for me the door to everything I love in the world.

  Albert Camus

  Doors, Attention, World

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• I have no friends, I only have accomplices now. On the other hand, my accomplices are more numerous than my friends: they are the human race.

  Albert Camus

  Race, Hands, No Friends

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• At the age of 40, having ordered meat very rare in restaurants all his life, he realized he actually liked it medium and not at all rare.

  Albert Camus

  Age, Meat, Restaurants

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• From Pandora's Box, where all the ills of humanity swarmed, the Greeks drew out hope after all the others, as the most dreadful of all. I know no more stirring symbol; for, contrary to the general belief, hope equals resignation. And to live is not to resign oneself.

  Albert Camus

  Greek, Humanity, Pandora's Box

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.153, Vintage

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• He knew now that it was his own will to happiness which must make the next move. But if he was to do so, he realized that he must come to terms with time, that to have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

  Albert Camus

  Retirement, Moving, Next Move

  Albert Camus (2012). “Happy Death”, p.82, Vintage

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• It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.

  Albert Camus

  Drama, Tragedy, Spain

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• Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended.

  Albert Camus

  Self Worth, Men, Greek

  "The Rebel". Book by Albert Camus, 1951.

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• I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.

  Albert Camus

  Philosophy, Thinking, Telling The Truth

  "Resistance, Rebellion, and Death" by Albert Camus, "Pessimism and Tyranny", 1960.

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• I know [my label], in any case: a double face, a charming Janus, and underneath, the house motto: "Be wary". On my business cards:"Jean-Baptiste Clamence, actor".

  Albert Camus

  Hypocrisy, House, Labels

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• 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

  Greek, Free Will, Boundaries

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.190, Vintage

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• 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

  Children, Men, Perfect

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.303, Vintage

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• The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. But happiness likewise, in its way, is without reason, since it is inevitable.

  Albert Camus

  Crush, Heart, Fate

  Albert Camus (1955). “The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays”

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• We know the surrealist solution: concrete irrationality, objective risk. Poetry is the conquest, the only possible conquest, of the 'supreme position', 'a certain position of the mind from where life and death, the real and the imaginary, the past and the future... cease to be perceived in a contradictory sense.'

  Albert Camus

  Real, Past, Life And Death

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.97, Vintage

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