aster ❦ > aster ❦'s Quotes

“I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”
― Albert Camus

“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
― Albert Camus

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

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

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.”
― Albert Camus

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”
― Albert Camus, The First Man

“Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.”
― Albert Camus

“I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”
― Albert Camus, L'Étranger

“Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it.”
― Albert Camus

“The literal meaning of life is whatever you're doing that prevents you from killing yourself.”
― Albert Camus

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“I know simply that the sky will last longer than I.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Anything to avoid contending with the possibility that all this killing wasn’t the result of a system abused, but a system functioning exactly as intended.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“In times like these, one remarkable difference between the modern Western conservative and their liberal counterpart is that the former will gleefully sign their name on the side of the bomb while the latter will just sheepishly initial it.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“(In the hierarchy of migration, “expat” is largely reserved for white Westerners who leave their homes for another country, usually because the money’s better there. When other people do this, they might be deemed “aliens” or “illegals” or at best “economic migrants.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Once far enough removed, everyone will be properly aghast that any of this was allowed to happen. But for now, it’s just so much safer to look away, to keep one’s head down, periodically checking on the balance of polite society to see if it is not too troublesome yet to state what to the conscience was never unclear.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Whose non existence is necessary to the self conception of this place?”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption in hindsight of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening, while the land is still being stolen, and the natives still being killed, any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight. I tell stories for a living and there’s a thick thread of narrative by well-meaning white Westerners that exalts the native populations in so many parts of the world for standing up to the occupiers. Makes of their narrative a neat, reflexive arc in which it was always understood by the colonized and, this part implied, the descendants of the colonizer, that what happened was wrong.”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This