Quotes by Camus, Albert

"It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it --just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore."

Camus, Albert on art   

"The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves."

Camus, Albert on love
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"Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never."

Camus, Albert on art   

"Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification."

Camus, Albert on life   

"A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad."

Camus, Albert on media   

"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."

Camus, Albert on misers and misery   

"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."

Camus, Albert on modern and modernism
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"It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money."

Camus, Albert on money   

"After all, every murderer when he kills runs the risk of the most dreadful of deaths, whereas those who kill him risk nothing except promotion."

Camus, Albert on murder   

"Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason."

Camus, Albert on music
6 fans of this quote   

"It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it."

Camus, Albert on nationalities and nationalism
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"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."

Camus, Albert on nature   

"We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity."

Camus, Albert on necessity   

"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."

Camus, Albert on noise   

"Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence."

Camus, Albert on nonviolence   

"Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery."

Camus, Albert on nostalgia   

"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."

Camus, Albert on optimism   

"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."

Camus, Albert on peace
9 fans of this quote   

"Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it."

Camus, Albert on philosophers and philosophy
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"God put self-pity by the side of despair like the cure by the side of the disease."

Camus, Albert on pity   

"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."

Camus, Albert on politics
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"In the depth of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

Camus, Albert on potential
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"The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case."

Camus, Albert on poverty and the poor   

"From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes."

Camus, Albert on power   

"To abandon oneself to principles is really to die -- and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love."

Camus, Albert on principles   

"The principles which men give to themselves end by overwhelming their noblest intentions."

Camus, Albert on principles   

"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 this today."

Camus, Albert on prison   

"The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm."

Camus, Albert on production   

"The society based on production is only productive, not creative."

Camus, Albert on production
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"Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature."

Camus, Albert on punishment   

"Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which are quite satisfied with mere imitation. In fact, art is never realistic though sometimes it is tempted to be. To be really realistic a description would have to be endless."

Camus, Albert on reality   

"Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being."

Camus, Albert on rebellion   

"What is a rebel? A man who says no."

Camus, Albert on rebellion
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"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."

Camus, Albert on rebellion   

"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."

Camus, Albert on relationship   

"Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear."

Camus, Albert on respectability
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"Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history."

Camus, Albert on evolution
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"Every revolutionary ends up by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic."

Camus, Albert on evolution   

"More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other."

Camus, Albert on evolution   

"As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the moon, which writes Arab symbols with phosphorescent streaks on the slow swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well they accompany sadness!"

Camus, Albert on sea