Albert Camus Quotes

My personal philosophy is, you can be sure of nothing.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing , but one who does not believe in what exists.

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance.

I can't even make a leap of faith to believe in my own existence.

Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then?

They haven't left us much to believe, have they? — even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.

There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything.

Since I came at 'Godot' from a God-based frame of mind, it didn't strike me as absurdist. It struck me as characters waiting for proof of God's existence.

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

I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe.

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

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps a doubt in reserve.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

That's something I learned as a philosophy major: The philosophy ethos is, always question, never rest.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

The absurd is sin without God.

I don't believe in anything, Mother," I said. "You told Armand long ago that you believe you'll find answers in the great jungles and forests; that the stars will finally reveal a vast truth. But I don't believe in anything. And that makes me stronger than you think

To a certain extent all philosophers have been involved in a systematic questioning that undermines confidence and certainty. Philosophy as a whole unleashed skeptical forces which, outside of the tightly controlled environment of a rigorous philosophical debate, led a lot of people to throw their hands up in despair and think 'what's the point?'. A lot of the public perception of philosophy is that it leaves you with no answers, and more confused than you were at the beginning.

And she would say, "Today you believe in God?" And he would say, "Today I believe in love".

Do I believe in God? Can't answer, I'm afraid. I'm not being flippant, but I don't understand the question. What is it that I am supposed to believe or not believe in? Are you asking whether I believe there is something not in the universe (or the universes, if there are (maybe infinitely) many of them), and that somehow stands above them? I've never heard of any reason for believing that.

The temerity to believe in nothing.

Descartes, the father of modern philosophy ... would never-so he assures us-have been led to construct his philosophy if he had had only one teacher, for then he would have believed what he had been told; but, finding that his professors disagreed with each other, he was forced to conclude that no existing doctrine was certain.