An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
Author
Albert Camus
102 quotations
About Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, writer, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history, and the first laureate in literature born in Africa. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.
Read on Wikipedia → Find books by Albert CamusMen must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.
Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
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.
Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.
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But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?
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.
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'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.
By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe thi…
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.
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.
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.
Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.
We turn toward God only to obtain the impossible.
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't and die to find out there is.
Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.
Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
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.