Albert Camus Quotes

One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.

If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful

Yet in truth the big question Camus asked was never the Anglo-American liberal one: How can we make the world a little bit better tomorrow? It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight? That the answers come to much the same thing in the end-easy does it; tomorrow may be a bit better than today; and, after all, you have to have a little faith in people-doesn't diminish the glamour that clings to the man who turned the question over and look at it, elegantly, upside down.

I really believe that 'Saw' makes us stop and think and question our motives and what we're doing here on Earth.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism.

I was much influenced by Jean-Paul Sartre.

Dost thou know what life is, my child? Hast thou comprehended the action of those springs which produce existence? Hast thou examined thyself?

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

The meaning of life is life.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

When I was young I read 'L'Etranger' by Camus, and it made me aware of the strangeness of life.

I don't find biology as interesting as politics and humanism. I talk more about existential stuff.

When I'm lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me.

'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.

Famously, there's not really anywhere to go after nihilism. It's not progressing toward anything, it's a statement of outrage, however brilliant.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.