Albert Camus Quotes

Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness.

Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is indistinguishable from its reality, whose ontology coincides with its representation.

Nothing too long imagined can be perfect in a wordly way.

I see only the ideal. But no ideals have ever been fully successful on this earth.

Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.

Utopias rest on the fallacy that perfection is a legitimate goal of human existence.

Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish.

Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.

Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.

And then what?" said her daemon sleepily. "Build what?" "The Republic of Heaven," said Lyra.

Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism.

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without the thorn.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

Ever since the Beatles, the concept of lovable mop tops, it's a bit of a fantasy, but it's a lovely idea that people make wonderful music and live a wonderful life being friends together. Sadly, life isn't quite like that.

Utopia means elsewhere.

Anyone who wants to have a perfect democracy is dreaming.

If we were capable of thinking of everything, we would still be living in Eden, rent-free with all-you-can-eat buffets and infinitely better daytime TV programming.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

If you have an ideal world, your actions should follow suit. And that will sort of hopefully spread.

Without the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves, miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines of the first City.....Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.

In this life of ours we remain directed toward the relative utopia of a better world, and sensibly this can be the only model for our action.

If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there'd be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.

Paradise does not exist, but we must nonetheless strive to be worthy of it.

Men cannot conceive of a state of things so fair that it cannot be realized.

No Utopia is Utopia for everyone