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Revolution Quotes by Albert Camus

45 Revolution quotes by Albert Camus

All Revolution quotes Albert Camus’s page

Albert Camus describes revolt as a core human instinct, a constant fight against obscurity and oppression. He says true rebellion requires honesty, a refusal to lie, and a strange form of love. He also warns that revolutions can be hijacked by bureaucrats, ending in police force or folly.

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With rebellion, awareness is born

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Art and revolt will die only with the last man.

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Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.

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Rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love.

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Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.

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I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

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Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty.

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“Essay on tragedy. (1) The silence of Prometheus. (2) The Elizabethans. (3) Moliere. (4) The spirit of revolt.”

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One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.

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Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

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Revolt and revolution both wind up at the same crossroads: the police, or folly

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It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us.

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Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of…

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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…

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Purely historical thought is therefore nihilistic: it wholeheartedly accepts the evil of history and in this way is opposed to rebellion.

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The spirit of rebellion can only exist in a society where a theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities. The problem of rebellion,…

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The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know,…

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“Revolt begins first in the human heart. But there comes a time when revolt spreads from heart to spirit, when a feeling…

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Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves…

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In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself - limits where minds…

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If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole…

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“Lenin only believes in the revolution and in the virtue of expediency.'One must be prepared for every sacrifice, to use, if necessary,…

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“today he felt life, youth, people slipping away from him, without being able to hold on to any of them, left with…

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“Aren’t you sentient human beings? Or are you living like animals for the moment only? In that case by all means indulge…

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Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist,…

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“Man’s solidarity is founded upon rebellion, and rebellion can only be justified by this solidarity. We then have authority to say that…

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“On the basis of the evidence, the only conclusion we can draw from Scheler’s remark is that, thanks to the theory of…

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“One of the only coherent philosophical positions is thus revolt. It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity. It…

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“The act of rebellion carries him beyond the point he reached by simply refusing. He exceeds the bounds that he established for…

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“The slave protests against the condition of his state of slavery; the metaphysical rebel protests against the human condition in general. The…

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“It is true that freedom, when it is made up principally of privileges, insults labor and separates it from culture. But freedom…

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

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The urge to revolt is one of the essential dimensions of human nature.

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The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically , expresses an aspiration for order .

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In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.

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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.

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Human rebellion ends in metaphysical revolution. It progresses from appearances to acts, from the dandy to the revolutionary.

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“The furious revolt of the first weeks had given place to a vast despondency, not to be taken for resignation, though it…

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The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The…

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In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a…

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More by Albert Camus

“The whole town rushed outside to celebrate this crowded minute when the time of suffering had ended and the time of forgetting had not…

Generally, I like all islands. There, it is easier to rule.

Being is good, but getting rich is better… If the gods had only the riches of men's adoration, they would be as poor as…

The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he…

“Having been, not only mutilated in our country, wounded in our very flesh, but also divested of our most beautiful images, for you gave…

I've seen of enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned it…

The best are led to make greater demands upon themselves. As for those who succumb, they did not deserve to survive.

“Then he asked me if I wasn’t interested in a change of life. I said that people never change their lives, that in any…

Life is meaningless, but worth living, provided you recognize it's meaningless.

Thinking of the future, establishing aims for oneself, having preferences-all this presupposes a belief in freedom, even if one occasionally ascertains that one doesn't…

I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.

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

“We love people not because for good they did for us, but for good we did for them.”

You have so much inside you, and the noblest happiness of all. Don’t just wait for a man to come along. That’s the mistake…

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the…