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Obedience
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Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.
-Albert Camus
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Oceans
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As usual I finish the day before the sea, sumptuous this evening beneath the moon, which writes Arab symbols with phosphorescent streaks on the slow swells. There is no end to the sky and the waters. How well they accompany sadness!
-Albert Camus
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Optimism
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If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.
-Albert Camus
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Peace
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We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.
-Albert Camus
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Perfection
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We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.
-Albert Camus
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Philosophy
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Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.
-Albert Camus
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Politics
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Politics and the fate of mankind are shaped by men without ideals and without greatness. Men who have greatness within them don't go in for politics.
-Albert Camus
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Poverty
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The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
-Albert Camus
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Power
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From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes.
-Albert Camus
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Pride
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The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.
-Albert Camus
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Principles
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To abandon oneself to principles is really to die -- and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
-Albert Camus
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Prison
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To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.
-Albert Camus
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Production
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The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
-Albert Camus
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The society based on production is only productive, not creative.
-Albert Camus
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Punishment
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Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature.
-Albert Camus
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Reading
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A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.
-Albert Camus
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Reality
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Realism should only be the means of expression of religious genius... or, at the other extreme, the artistic expressions of monkeys which are quite satisfied with mere imitation. In fact, art is never realistic though sometimes it is tempted to be. To be really realistic a description would have to be endless.
-Albert Camus
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Relationships
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Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future --and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people.
-Albert Camus
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Remembrance
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Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.
-Albert Camus
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Respect
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Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
-Albert Camus
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Revolution
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Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history.
-Albert Camus
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Every revolutionary ends up by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
-Albert Camus
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More and more, revolution has found itself delivered into the hands of its bureaucrats and doctrinaires on the one hand, and to the enfeebled and bewildered masses on the other.
-Albert Camus
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Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.
-Albert Camus
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What is a rebel? A man who says no.
-Albert Camus
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Books by and about Albert Camus