There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.

The line expresses a principled pacifism: one may accept personal sacrifice for justice or truth, but should refuse to take another person’s life in the name of any ideology. It draws a sharp moral boundary between martyrdom (choosing to risk or give one’s own life) and murder (deciding that someone else must die for a cause). In Camus’s ethical universe—shaped by his critique of revolutionary “ends justify the means” reasoning—the quote encapsulates a refusal of political violence and a defense of human limits. It implies that a cause that requires killing has already betrayed the very human dignity it claims to serve.