222 quotes
Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.
Between Hell and Reason (1945)
I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The greatest saving one can make in the order of thought is to accept the unintelligibility of the world — and to pay attention to man.
Notebooks (1942)
If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
He kept the middle way, that's all: he was the type of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order - which is the kind that wears best.
The Plague (1947)
"This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right."
The Fall (1956)
With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot, under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even temporarily.
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1960)
Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.
The Rebel (1951)
I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.
The Stranger (1942)
He discovered the cruel paradox by which we always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.
A Happy Death (written 1936-38 (1971)
I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
As if the blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
The Stranger (1942)
Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.
There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.
The Plague (1947)
The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us.
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)
Yes, everyone sleeps at that hour, and this is reassuring, since the great longing of an unquiet heart is to possess constantly and consciously the loved one...
The Plague (1947)
On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. ... the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.
The Fall (1956)
Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.
The Plague (1947)