Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 November 1913
CountryFrance
country travel old-habits
What gives value to travel is fear. It is a fact that, at a certain moment, when we are so far from our own country, we are seized by a vague fear and an instinctive desire to go back to the protection of old habits. I look upon it more as an occasion for testing.
challenges age peculiar
Slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or the taste of the superhuman, cripple judgment. On the day when crime puts on the apparel of innocence, through a curious reversal peculiar to our age, it is innocence that is called on to justify itself. The purpose of this essay is to accept and study that strange challenge.
kind breaking-down mask
Travel breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. Stripped of our props, deprived of our masks, we are completely on the surface of ourselves.
art real criticism
In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary.
fighting history prestige
The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power.
men two four
Again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. ("The Plague")
murder exhausting
Murder is terribly exhausting.
inspirational lying years
For years I've wanted to live according to everyone else's morals. I've forced myself to live like everyone else, to look like everyone else. I said what was necessary to join together, even when I felt separate. And after all of this, catastrophe came. Now I wander amid the debris, I am lawless, torn to pieces, alone and accepting to be so, resigned to my singularity and to my infirmities. And I must rebuild a truth-after having lived all my life in a sort of lie.
new-york real blow
I am just coming out of five years of night, and this orgy of violent lights gives me for the first time the impression of a new continent. An enormous, 50-foot high Camel billboard : a GI with his mouth wide open blows enormous puffs of real smoke. So much bad taste hardly seems imaginable.
heart body illusion
It is not true that the heart wears out - but the body creates this illusion.
philosophy ironic passionate
Ironic philosophies produce passionate works.
absurd
The absurd has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.
ideas views giving
It is natural to give a clear view of the world after accepting the idea that it must be clear.
heart stubborn humans
There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart.