Albert Camus

“Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.”

“By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.”

“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.”

“Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”

“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”

“I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up.”

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

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

“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.”

“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.”

“Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.”

“A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.”

“Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

“Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.”

“After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.”

“For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.”

“Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them.”

“I am not made for politics because I am incapable of wanting or accepting the death of the adversary.”

“Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.”

“Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.”