None of the evils which totalitarianism ... claims to remedy is worse than totalitarianism itself.

Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.

If I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Freedom is not a gift received from the State or leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.