Albert Camus Quotes

Questioning authority can hardly be called our national pastime. We even make a philosophy out of fear. Fatalism, destiny, karma... are the favourite cultural holes we hide in when authority flogs us. And what's our tragedy.

We consider the animals to be lower, and to me, that makes no sense at all. If you look at a tree or a mushroom or a squirrel, it's perfectly in tune with itself. It has no problem being exactly what it is, and it does what it's meant to do without any complaints or problems. Because we create all these problems in being, we think we're somehow higher than the animals. But it's we humans who have a difficult time even caring for our children, or anything.

Do you suppose there's any difference between spring in nature and spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.

I wouldn't have turned out the way I was if I didn't have all those old-fashioned values to rebel against.

I don't want to be anyone's role model. My mole models were assholes. My role models are dead. My role models never made it to 30, so I'm a bad person to ask for advice.

This world is bullshit. And you shouldn't model your life — wait a second — you shouldn't model your life about what you think that we think is cool and what we're wearing and what we're saying and everything. Go with yourself. Go with yourself.

It takes more than going down to the video store and renting "Easy Rider" to be a rebel.

The popular culture says . . . Do what you do, your life is predestined, like the installment plan on your house. There's not much you can do about it. Make your payments, live it, get sick, die, don't make any trouble. It is the Master Charge of destiny. Try to get your high credit rating.

I didn't have any definition of self. I never fit in, so I started pretending I was other people. I'd find people I thought were cool and dress how they dressed, talk how they talked, do whatever they were into. This led to a period of drugs and anchohol. When his family gave him an ultimatum to get clean or they'd report him to the police Corey said, "I was done fighting myself. I finally said, "I'm gonna start looking at my life and figure out why I'm doing this.

Wisdom and policy dictate that we must do as destiny demands and keep peace with the irresistible march of events.

I regret that I didn’t realize that actually they’ve got no power over you at school — it’s all just a trick to indoctrinate you into being a conditioned, tame, placid citizen. Rebel, children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory.

[It is] useful to know the laws of nature - for that enables us to obey them. To act otherwise would be to rise in revolt against heaven.

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

I like maxims that don't encourage behavior modification.

I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel.

I get slightly irritated by people who say they're natural rebels because it just means that they're going to be against whatever anybody does, which is almost like saying you might as well leave it as it is.

the difference between a rebel and a patriot depends upon who is in power at the moment.

I refuse to follow the rules where society tries to control people with low self esteem.

The end may be defined as life in accordance with nature or, in other words, in accordance with our own human nature as well as that of the universe.

What I mean is that those thoughts, they're human. And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most popular girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.

People do what they are told not to do. It happens time and time again. Here on the frozen tundra, it is known as the Tongue on the Frozen Pump Handle principle.

What we have are good gray ballplayers, playing a good gray game and reading the good gray Wall Street Journal. They have been brainwashed, dry-cleaned and dehydrated!... Wake up the echoes at the Hall of Fame and you will find that baseball's immortals were a rowdy and raucous group of men who would climb down off their plaques and go rampaging through Cooperstown, taking spoils.... Deplore it if you will, but Grover Cleveland Alexander drunk was a better pitcher than Grover Cleveland Alexander sober.

Human history began with an act of disobedience and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

Don't know which one is worse, doing your own thing or just being cool.

I'm writing what I want to write. But it's almost an act of rebellion on my part. Because as a person, I've always wanted to be very likeable, and I think that's a horrible thing, particularly for women. You're always like, "Oh, I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings. I hope they like me!" And that's just so stupid.