Looking for the best Albert Camus quotes? The you’re at the right place.
French philosopher, author and journalist, Albert Camus was best know for promoting the concept of “absurdism” — the human conflict between seeking value and meaning in life and our inability to actually find them.
His most notable work included The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus.
Growing up, Camus was an excellent student who loved football. But his football ambitions sadly came to an end at 17 when he was inflicted with tuberculosis. The same disease kept him from becoming a teacher later in life too.
That didn’t stop him from writing though, and in 1957 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In spite of a troubled past, Albert Camus continues to inspire writers, journalists and anyone with a burning desire to succeed.
I’ve compiled the most inspirational Albert Camus quotes on life, friendship, love, freedom and pretty much everything in between. Hope you enjoy them!
75 Best Albert Camus Quotes
- “Greatness consists in trying to be great. There is no other way.” – Albert Camus
2. “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.” – Albert Camus
3. “Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.” – Albert Camus
4. “To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.” – Albert Camus
5. “Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. To know oneself, one should assert oneself.” – Albert Camus
6. “The place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.” – Albert Camus
7. “Having money is a way of being free of money.” – Albert Camus
8. “When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him.” – Albert Camus
9. “Integrity has no need of rules.” – Albert Camus
10. “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.” – Albert Camus
11. “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” – Albert Camus
12. “Life can be magnificent and overwhelming – that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.” – Albert Camus
13. “When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.” – Albert Camus
14. “Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.” – Albert Camus
15. “No matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” – Albert Camus
16. “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” – Albert Camus
17. “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” – Albert Camus
18. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” – Albert Camus
19. “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.” – Albert Camus
20. “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.” – Albert Camus
21. “Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.” – Albert Camus
22. “A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.” – Albert Camus
23. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” – Albert Camus
24. “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.” – Albert Camus
25. “There is no love of life without despair of life.” – Albert Camus
26. “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.” – Albert Camus
27. “No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.” – Albert Camus
28. “Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.” – Albert Camus
29. “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” – Albert Camus
30. “Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.” – Albert Camus
31. “I know of one duty, and that is to love.” – Albert Camus
32. “Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.” – Albert Camus
33. “Charm is a way of getting the answer ‘yes’ without asking a clear question.” – Albert Camus
34. “I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.” – Albert Camus
35. “If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.” – Albert Camus
36. “Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.” – Albert Camus
37. “I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.” – Albert Camus
38. “Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences—all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn’t feel it.” – Albert Camus
39. “I knew a man who gave 20 years of his life to a scatterbrained woman, sacrificing everything to her, his friendships, his work, the very respectability of his life and who one evening recognized that he had never loved her. He had been bored, that’s all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen – even loveless slavery, even war or death.” – Albert Camus
40. “Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.” – Albert Camus
41. “Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.” – Albert Camus
42. “It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.” – Albert Camus
43. “There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.” – Albert Camus
44. “To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.” – Albert Camus
45. “Peace is the only battle worth waging.” – Albert Camus
46. “You always get exaggerated notions about things you don’t know anything about.” – Albert Camus
47. “We rarely confide in those who are better than we. Most often, on the other hand, we confess to those who are like us and who share our weaknesses. Hence we don’t want to improve ourselves and be bettered, for we should first have to be judged in default. We merely wish to be pitied and encouraged in the course we have chosen.” – Albert Camus
48. “A man wants to earn money in order to be happy, and his whole effort and the best of a life are devoted to the earning of that money. Happiness is forgotten; the means are taken for the end.” – Albert Camus
49. “Whatever prevents you from doing your work has become your work.” – Albert Camus
50. “I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.” – Albert Camus
51. “It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.” – Albert Camus
52. “At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.” – Albert Camus
53. “Success is easy to obtain, what is difficult is to deserve it.” – Albert Camus
54. “Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?” – Albert Camus
55. “Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.” – Albert Camus
56. “The Four Conditions of Happiness: Life in the open air, Love for another being, Freedom from ambition, Creation.” – Albert Camus
57. “Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.” – Albert Camus
58. “Yes, everything is simple. It’s people who complicate things.” – Albert Camus
59. “Where there is no hope, we must invent it.” – Albert Camus
60. “That is love, to give away everything, to sacrifice everything, without the slightest desire to get anything in return.” – Albert Camus (I found this to be one of the most inspirational Albert Camus quotes on love. Agree?)
61. “Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.” – Albert Camus
62. “There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.” – Albert Camus
63. “You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.” – Albert Camus
64. “Find your happiness in yourself.” – Albert Camus
65. “There is scarcely any passion without struggle.” – Albert Camus
66. “One dies if necessary, one breaks rather than bending. But I bend, because I continue to love myself.” – Albert Camus
67. “Travel, which is like a greater and a graver science, brings us back to ourselves.” – Albert Camus
68. “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.” – Albert Camus (One of the best Albert Camus quotes on friendship.)
69. “My dear, In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love. In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm. I realized, through it all, that… In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.” – Albert Camus
70. “How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.” – Albert Camus
71. “Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never.” – Albert Camus
72. “Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.” – Albert Camus
73. “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” – Albert Camus (This Albert Camus quote on coffee is one for all you coffee lovers out there.)
74. “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.” – Albert Camus
75. “A loveless world is a dead world.” – Albert Camus
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