Quote

But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

Albert Camus

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Albert Camus
Age: 46 †
Born: 1913
Born: November 7
Died: 1960
Died: January 4
Author
Essayist
French Resistance Fighter
Journalist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Professor
Screenwriter
Writer
Drean
Camus
Millions
Served
Imagination
Hardly
Seen
Substance
Since
Smoke
Broadcast
Actually
Million
Existentialism
War
Hundred
Puff
History
Unless
Deaths
Men
Dead
Corpses

More quotes by Albert Camus

Image
I don't want to represent man as he is, but only as he might be.
Albert Camus
Image
I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent. An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard : a GI with his mouth wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable.
Albert Camus
Image
My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.
Albert Camus
Image
The best revenge you can have on intellectuals is to be madly happy.
Albert Camus
Image
All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.
Albert Camus
Image
The struggle to the top alone will make a human heart SWELL.
Albert Camus
Image
Since the order of the world is shaped by death, mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in Him, and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes towards the heaven where He sits in silence?
Albert Camus
Image
Rule: Start by looking for what is valid in every man.
Albert Camus
Image
[Liberty] is a choreand a long-distance race, quite solitary, quite exhausting.
Albert Camus
Image
If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy.
Albert Camus
Image
The greatness of man lies in his decision to be stronger than his condition.
Albert Camus
Image
If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.
Albert Camus
Image
The mistake that men make is that they do not believe in theater. Otherwise, they would know that every man is allowed to play thecelestial tragedies and to become god. All he has to do is harden his heart.
Albert Camus
Image
Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly.
Albert Camus
Image
The soul of a murderer is blind
Albert Camus
Image
Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.
Albert Camus
Image
I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.
Albert Camus
Image
Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.
Albert Camus
Image
It is not the world that is absurd, nor human thought: the absurd arises when the human need to understand meets the unreasonableness of the world, when 'my appetite for the absolute and for unity' meets 'the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle.'
Albert Camus
Image
What made me run away was doubtless not so much the fear of settling down, but of settling down permanently in something ugly.
Albert Camus