Albert Camus Quotes

Notwithstanding this high Ecclesiastical authority, he who dared accept truth only because it could be proved, or proved to be good, and disregard authority, was commonly stigmatized as an infidel.

Socrates was executed … not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.

The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.

Just because everybody else is engaged in a group hug with Barack Obama doesn't mean that somebody doesn't have to tell the truth.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

The public use of a man's reason must be free at all times…. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don't argue! The military officer says: Don't argue, drill! The tax collector: Don't argue, pay! The minister: Don't argue, believe!

Freedom of the mind requires not only, or not even specially, the absence of legal constraints but the presence of alternative thoughts. The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities.

In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to wisdom is a liberal education.

Whoever ventures to attack a system received so generally, and supported by so great a weight of authority, is exposed to various evils. They who have embraced its principles are apt to slight and neglect, or, if that may not he, to conceive it their business to overthrow the heterodox doctrines. What of error they may contain is eagerly seized on, what of truth, is overlooked.

I'm used to being told what to say, but not what to think... that's usually left up to me.

The moment you start asking questions, you become public enemy number one.

If you tell the truth all day long, you will end up in jail.

All modern philosophizing is political, policed by governments, churches, academics, custom, fashion, and human cowardice, all off which limit it to a fake learnedness.

Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")

It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new. He will not believe men because they are dead, or contradict them because they are alive. With him an utterance is worth the truth, the reason it contains, without the slightest regard to the author. He may have been a king or serf - a philosopher or servant, - but the utterance neither gains nor loses in truth or reason. Its value is absolutely independent of the fame or station of the man who gave it to the world.

Thought must never submit, neither to a dogma, nor to a party, nor to a passion, nor to an interest, nor to a preconceived idea, nor to whatever it may be, save to the facts themselves, because, for thought, submission would mean ceasing to be.

The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has—from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness.

The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.

The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.

Answers given with authority negate the search for truth.

One must be truthful and honest in his approach; a constant independent inquiry and not blindly following a certain blue print laid down by others

Let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid down with ought with because with every brain which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel.