Albert Camus Quotes

L'absurde est la notion essentielle et la premie' re ve? rite? . The absurd is the fundamental idea and the first truth.

I think life's an irrational obsession.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

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

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

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.

I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.

It may be that there was no reason or purpose, for mankind must always be finding reasons where there are none, and comfort in a purpose that hardly exists.

There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.

why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.

L'homme est une passion inutile. Man is a useless passion.

Without the constantly living and articulated eperience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?

The absolute has moved into the fortress of the absurd.

HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something? CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one!

One must either take an interest in the human situation or else parade before the void.

The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to.

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

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.

It's not even a question of whether the universe is meaningful or meaningless. It's in what way could it be meaningful, or in what way, if it was meaningful, could that be even more meaningless than normal meaninglessness?

Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.

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

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