Születési dátum: 7. november 1913
Halál dátuma: 4. január 1960
Albert Camus Nobel-díjas francia író és filozófus, az egzisztencializmus egyik meghatározó alakja. Wikipedia
A Nobel-díj átvételekor mondta.
Forrással ellátott idézetei
A lázadó ember
Forrással ellátott idézetei
ford. Fekist
Camus à „Combat” Éditoriaux et articles (1944-1947) [2002]. 665. old. (Édition de Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi, Collection Cahiers Albert Camus [No 8], Gallimard) ISBN 2070759423.
Forrással ellátott idézetei
Forrás: "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976)
"Entre oui et non" in L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), translated as "Between Yes and No", in World Review magazine (March 1950), also quoted in The Artist and Political Vision (1982) by Benjamin R. Barber and Michael J. Gargas McGrath
Kontextus: Don't let them tell us stories. Don't let them say of the man sentenced to death "He is going to pay his debt to society," but: "They are going to cut off his head." It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference. And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.
Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; reprinted in Selected Essays and Notebooks, translated and edited by Philip Thody
Kontextus: A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy has passed into the images. But if once the philosophy overflows the characters and action, and therefore looks like a label stuck on the work, the plot loses its authenticity and the novel its life. Nevertheless, a work that is to last cannot dispense with profound ideas. And this secret fusion between experiences and ideas, between life and reflection on the meaning of life, is what makes the great novelist.
"Helen's Exile" (1948)
Kontextus: Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.
— Albert Camus, könyv The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
Kontextus: At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. <!-- 155
— Albert Camus, könyv Reflections on the Guillotine
Reflections on the Guillotine (1957)
Kontextus: When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. … there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.
— Albert Camus, könyv The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Kontextus: Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective. It is also the staggering evidence of man's sole dignity: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in an effort considered sterile. It calls for a daily effort, self-mastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure, and strength. It constitutes an ascesis. All that "for nothing," in order to repeat and mark time. But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.
A letter to Weil's mother in 1951 http://simoneweil.net/lesautres.htm
Variant translation: The only great spirit of our time.
As quoted in Between the Human and the Divine : The Political Thought of Simone Weil (1988) by Mary G. Dietz, Introduction, p. xiv
Kontextus: Simone Weil, I maintain this now, is the only great spirit of our times and I hope that those who realize this have enough modesty to not try to appropriate her overwhelming witnessing.
For my part, I would be satisfied if one could say that in my place, with the humble means at my disposal, I served to make known and disseminate her work whose full impact we have yet to measure.
— Albert Camus, könyv The Rebel
The Rebel (1951)
Kontextus: One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemned out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood... In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and the judgment remained unclouded. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence — through a curious transposition peculiar to our times — it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.
— Albert Camus, könyv The Plague
The Plague (1947)
Kontextus: There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.
— Albert Camus, könyv The Myth of Sisyphus
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Kontextus: In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.
