Quote #183

Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and they have a perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges.

More from Albert Camus

  1. 'Only the modern city,' Hegel dares to write, 'offers the mind a field in which it can become aware of itself.' We are thus living in the p…
  2. Our most effective terrorists, whether they are armed with bombs or with poetry, hardly escape from infancy.
  3. One of the temptations of an artist is to believe himself solitary ...But this is not true. He stands in the midst of all, in the same rank
  4. Philosophy secularizes the ideal. But tyrants appear who soon secularize the philosophies that give them the right to do so.
  5. One can reject all history and yet accept the world of the sea and the stars.
  6. Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in …
  7. Of whom and of what indeed can I say: 'I know that!' This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, a…
  8. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

All Albert Camus quotes