All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that...

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

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... inside ourselves.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are...

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that...

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

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