Albert Camus Quotes on Knowledge
Albert Camus approached knowledge through his philosophy of the absurd, the gap between the human demand for clarity and a world that does not supply it. The quotes gathered here express a measured scepticism: with the exception of professional rationalists, he writes, people today despair of true knowledge, and a true history of human thought would be a history of its successive regrets and impotences. Yet this is not a counsel of ignorance. In The Plague, the value placed highest is comprehension, named by one character as his entire code of morals, and Camus reflects on how people, for want of time and thought, fail to understand even those they love. Drawn from his essays and novels, these passages present knowledge as limited but morally indispensable.
Quotes
-
“Nous nous trompons toujours deux fois sur ceux que nous aimons: d'abord à leur avantage, puis à leur désavantage.”
We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love — first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage. A Happy Death (written 1938), first published as La mort heureuse (1971), as translated by Richard Howard (1972) -
“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 f”
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 -
“It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty , love , or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reason”
Review of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre , published in the newspaper Alger Républicain (20 October 1938), p. 5; also quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002) by Avi Sagi, p. 43 -
“We have exiled beauty ; the Greeks took up arms for her.”
Helen's Exile" (1948) -
“Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.”
"The Sea Close By" in Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970) -
“Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.”
The Myth of Sisyphus(1942) | "Hope and the Absurd in the work of Franz Kafka " -
“With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.”
An Absurd Reasoning | Absurd Walls -
“In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.”
The Plague(1947) -
“"What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?" "I don't know. My... my code of morals, perhaps." "Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension."”
The Plague(1947)