Philosophy Quote by Albert Camus — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“It is necessary to fall in love – the better to provide an alibi for all the despair we are going to feel anyway.”

“Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man's heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.”

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”

“Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”

“Perhaps the easiest way of making a town's acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.”

“There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.”

“A lie repeated may build power, but it cannot build trust.”

“The delight we take in our senses is an implicit desire to know the ultimate reason for things, the highest cause. The desire for wisdom that philosophy etymologically is is a desire for the highest or divine causes. Philosophy culminates in theology. All other knowledge contains the seeds of contemplation of the divine.”

“Pain may be the only reality but if mankind had any sense it would pursue the delusion called happiness. All the philosophers and poets who tell us that pain and suffering have a place and purpose in the cosmic order of things are welcome to them. They are frauds. We justify pain because we do not know what to make of it, nor do we have any choice but to bear it. Happiness alone can make us momentarily larger than ourselves.”

“Be the kind of person who catches the shit before it hits the fan, not the one who scrapes it off afterwards.”