Albert Camus

Conscious of not being able to separate myself from my time, I have decided to become part of it.

The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains a freelance.

To cut short the question of the law of retaliation, we must note that even in its primitive form it can operate only between two individuals of whom one is absolutely innocent, and the other absolutely guilty. The victim, to be sure, is innocent. But can the society that is supposed to represent the victim lay claim to innocence?

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.

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.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.

You have to be very rich or very poor to live without a trade.

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

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.

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

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

Violence is both unavoidable and unjustifiable.

To be famous, in fact, one has only to kill one's landlady.

The real passion of the twentieth century is servitude.