15 Albert Camus Quotes on Society

Albert Camus quotes on society

17. The papers were always talking about the debt owed to society. According to them, it had to be paid. But that doesn't speak to the imagination. What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap to freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.

35. Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

96. The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. It would be easy, however, to destroy that good conscience by shouting to them: if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don't want! But, in truth, the very ones who make use of such alibis know they are lies; they leave to their intellectuals on duty the chore of believing in them and of proving that religion, patriotism, and justice need for their survival the sacrifice of freedom.

120. Differences are the roots without which the tree of liberty, the sap of creation and of civilization, dries up.

135. From the moment that eternal principles are put in doubt simultaneously with formal virtue, and when every value is discredited, reason will start to act without reference to anything but its own successes... All that was God's will henceforth be rendered to Caesar.

146. I have shared and I still share many of the contemporary frenzies. But I have never been able to get myself to spit, as so many others do, on the word 'honor.'

159. In the twentieth century power wears the mask of tragedy.

164. Liberty ultimately seems to me, for societies and for individuals, for labor and for culture, the supreme good that governs all others.

172. National society can be preserved only by opening it up to a universal perspective.

194. The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation.

203. The majority of revolutions are shaped by, and derive their originality from, murder.

231. To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.

237. Totality is, in effect, nothing other than the ancient dream of unity common to both believers and rebels, but projected horizontally onto an earth deprived of God.

238. Unity and diversity, and never one without the other...

246. We must accept the dangers: the era of chairbound artists is over. But we must reject the bitterness ... Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.