# Quote — Albert Camus, The Plague

> He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

- Author: [Albert Camus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus.md)
- Book: [The Plague](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-plague.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus#The_Plague_(1947)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Topics: [death](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/death.md)
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-plague/he-tried-to-recall

## More from this book

> A scourge is not on a human scale, and so people say it isn't real; it's a bad dream that will pass. But is doesn't always pass, and, from bad dream to bad dream, it's the humans who pass, and the humanists first, because they didn't heed the warnings.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-plague/a-scourge-is-not.md)

> 'At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.'

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-plague/at-my-age.md)

Topics: [lies](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/lies.md), [honesty](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/honesty.md)

> The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/albert-camus/the-plague/the-evil-that.md)

Topics: [knowledge](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/knowledge.md), [evil](https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/evil.md)