Albert Camus

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death. ”

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 warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium. ”

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

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles. ”

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. ”

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened. ”

Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and that is its whole secret. ”

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed. ”

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children. ”

A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world. ”