Albert Camus Quotes

We know life is futile. A man who considers that his life is of very wonderful importance is awfully close to a padded cell.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

Ours is an excessively conscious age. We know so much, we feel so little.

Too much knowledge and analysis can be paralysis.

It's really easy to slide into a depression fueled by the pointlessness of existence.

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.

I believe that we are all, openly or secretly, struggling against one or another kind of nihilism.

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 searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND.

the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)

Meaninglessness takes hold because meaninglessness is addictive.

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

Distortion upon distortion: . . . the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.

Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

Nothing makes sense, why should I?

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.

Everything means nothing to me

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,--when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation.

No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.

This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.

When I was done traveling, I returned convinced of one thing: we're nothing.