Looking for the best and inspirational Albert Camus quotes?
Camus was a 20th-century French philosopher and novelist. He is known for his work in philosophy, existentialism, and as a writer of fiction. His most notable works include The Stranger, The Plague, and Exile and the Kingdom.
Born on November 7th, 1913, in French Algeria to poor yet hardworking parents, Camus moved to France at the age of 10 during World War I. After graduating high school, he studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, where he first learned about Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato. His academic success led him to study at the University of Paris in 1937, where he became familiar with Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophical ideas about existentialism, which would later profoundly affect Camus’s life and work.
His works explore the concepts of existentialism and nihilism, which are both philosophical schools of thought that oppose any ideas about values or morality.
Check out his inspirational quotes to help you train your mind and calm the anxiety in your life.
87 Albert Camus Quotes To Calm Your Mind
“Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and that is its whole secret.”
“The struggle to the top alone will make a human heart swell.”
“An achievement is a bondage. It obliges one to a higher achievement.”
“I don’t want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.”
“In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”
“No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
“Life is a sum of all your choices.”
“There is no love of life without despair of life.”
“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.”
“In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.”
“Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness.”
“Life can be magnificent and overwhelming – that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.”
“Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.”
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”
“To know oneself, one should assert oneself.”
“Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.”
“Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”
“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.”
“The truth, as the light, makes blind.”
“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
“There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.”
“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.”
“All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant’s revolving door.”
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.”
“Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.”
“Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.”
“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.”
“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”
“Real nobility is based on scorn, courage, and profound indifference.”
“Every revolution ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic“
“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
“Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.”
“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
“We are all special cases.”
“It is not humiliating to be unhappy. Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.”
“I don’t want to be a genius – I have enough problems just trying to be a man“
“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
“Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.”
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance.”
“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”
“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.”
“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence.”
“We call first truths those we discover after all the others.”
“It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.”
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.”
“Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.”
“Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.”
“Integrity has no need of rules.”
“There’s no need to hang about waiting for the last judgment. It takes place every day.”
“Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.”
“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.”
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
“How hard, how bitter it is to become a man!“
“Absolute virtue is impossible and the republic of forgiveness leads, with implacable logic, to the republic of the guillotine.”
“Every artist wants to be recognized. So do I.”
“You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.”
“Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”
“Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.”
“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
“Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.”
“I know that man is capable of great deeds. But if he isn’t capable of great emotion, well, he leaves me cold.”
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
“No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.”
“Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.”
“Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”
“To be happy we must not be too concerned with others.”
“The evil that is in the world almost always comes from ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.”
“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
“Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.”
“Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.”
“A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”
“The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.”
“Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”
“If there is sin against life, it consists… in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.”
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
“We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.”
“The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.”
“There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.”
“We all carry within us places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves and others.”
“Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.”
“I know of one duty, and that is to love.”
“The need to be right – the sign of a vulgar mind.”
“The place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”
“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
