Albert Camus Quotes on Mind
Albert Camus's reflections on the mind, gathered here, range from inner resilience to intellectual independence. His most quoted line on the subject, the discovery in the depth of winter of an invincible summer within, expresses a confidence that the mind carries its own resources against despair, and he notes with sympathy the hidden effort some people spend merely to be normal. Camus also prized independence of thought: he distanced himself from the fashionable existentialism of his contemporaries, judging its conclusions false, and insisted that the truth of an idea cannot be settled by whether it is right-wing or left-wing. Drawn from his notebooks, essays, and The Rebel, these passages show a thinker who valued clear, honest, and unaffiliated thinking over allegiance to any system.
Quotes
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“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
O light ! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer . -
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
Notebooks 1935-1942 -
Attributed to Albert Camus:
“In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.”
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“Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.”
The Rebel(1951) | Part 4: Rebellion and Art -
“I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.”
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death(1960) | "Pessimism and Tyranny" -
“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.”
Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre , 30 June 1952. As quoted in Paris after the Liberation: 1944-1949 by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper . -
“If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.”
Absurd Creation -
“It takes time to live. Like any work of art , life needs to be thought about.”
A Happy Death(written 1936-38 (published in 1971, over 11 years after the author's death))