Albert CamusMankind’s long dialogue has just come to an end.
Albert Camus
Absurd, and not depressing about it
Philosophy
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
Camus fought in the French Resistance, edited an underground paper, and won the Nobel at forty-four. He rejected the label existentialist and broke with Sartre over political violence. His position: the universe owes us no meaning, we go on demanding it, and the honest response is to live fully anyway rather than to despair or to lie.
Read when nothing seems to add up to anything and you still have to decide what to do today
Utopia is whatever is in contradiction with reality.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
Every future revolution will be a foreign revolution.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered.
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating.
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world.
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
It is true that we cannot “escape History,” since we are in it up to our necks.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
True artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
Modern nations are driven by powerful forces along the roads of power and domination.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
History is simply man’s desperate effort to give body to his most clairvoyant dreams.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
What writer would from now on in good conscience dare set himself up as a preacher of virtue?
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
If he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
The only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions.
Neither Victims Nor Executioners, politics magazine (July–August 1947) · 1946
The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
The nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.
Nobel Banquet Speech, Stockholm City Hall · 1957
