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Albert Camus

Geburtstag: 7. November 1913
Todesdatum: 4. Januar 1960

Albert Camus [alˈbɛːʀ kaˈmy] war ein französischer Schriftsteller und Philosoph. 1957 erhielt er für sein publizistisches Gesamtwerk den Nobelpreis für Literatur. Camus gilt als einer der bekanntesten und bedeutendsten französischen Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts.

Zitate Albert Camus

„Wo der Mut keine Zunge hat, bleibt die Vernunft stumm. Jupp Müller Es ehrt unsere Zeit, dass sie genügend Mut aufbringt, Angst vor dem Krieg zu haben.“

— Albert Camus

Über Krieg, Über Angst

„Der Kampf gegen Gipfel vermag ein Menschenherz auszufüllen. Wir müssen uns Sisyphos als einen glücklichen Menschen vorstellen.“

— Albert Camus
Der Mythos des Sisyphos, Übersetzt von Vincent von Wroblewsky, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 12. Auflage, Hamburg, 2010, ISBN 978-3-499-22765-3, S. 160

Über Glück

„Es gibt kein Schicksal, welches nicht durch Verachtung überwunden werden kann.“

— Albert Camus
Der Mythos des Sisyphos, Rowohlt, Hamburg 1995, S. 99

Über Schicksal

„Sie wissen ja, was Charme ist: eine Art, ein Ja zur Antwort zu erhalten, ohne eine klare Frage gestellt zu haben.“

— Albert Camus
Der Fall. Deutsch von Guido G. Meister. © Rowohlt Verlag 1957. Bibliothek Suhrkamp 1965. S. 55

„Von einem bestimmten Alter an ist jeder Mensch für sein Gesicht verantwortlich.“

— Albert Camus
Der Fall. Deutsch von Guido G. Meister. © Rowohlt Verlag 1957. Bibliothek Suhrkamp 1965. S. 55

Über Menschen, Über Alter

„Das Absurde hat nur insofern einen Sinn, als man sich nicht mit ihm abfindet.“

— Albert Camus
Der Mythos des Sisyphos, S. 46, ISBN 3499227657

„[... ] die Freiheit besteht in erster Linie nicht aus Privilegien, sondern aus Pflichten.“

— Albert Camus
Brot und Freiheit. Ansprache vom 10. Mai 1953 an der Arbeitsbörse von St-Etienne. In: Fragen der Zeit. Deutsch von Guido G. Meister. Rowohlt Verlag 1960. S. 100

„Die wahre Großzügigkeit gegenüber der Zukunft besteht darin, alles der Gegenwart zu geben.“

— Albert Camus
Der Mensch in der Revolte, zitiert in Morvan Lebesque: Albert Camus in Selbstzeugnisse und Bilddokumenten. Deutsch von Guido G. Meister. Rowohlts Monographien 1960. S. 109

„Ein Mensch ist immer das Opfer seiner Wahrheiten.“

— Albert Camus
Der Mythos von Sisyphos. Deutsch von Hans Georg Brenner und Wolfdietrich Rasch. Karl Rauch Verlag Düsseldorf. 68. Tausend 1960. S. 46

Über Menschen, Über Wahrheit

„The Grand Inquisitor is old and tired, for the knowledge he possesses is bitter.“

— Albert Camus
Context: Alyosha can, in fact, treat Ivan with compassion as a "real simpleton." The latter only made aa attempt at self-control and failed. Others will appear, with more serious intentions, who, on the basis of the same despairing nihilism, will insist on ruling the world. These are the Grand Inquisitors who imprison Christ and come to tell Him that His method is not correct, that universal happiness cannot be achieved by the immediate freedom of choosing between good and evil, but by the domination and unification of the world. The first step is to conquer and rule. The kingdom of heaven will, in fact, appear on earth, but it will be ruled over by men — a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Cassars, because they were the first to understand — and later, with time, by all men. The unity of all creation will be achieved by every possible means, since everything is permitted. The Grand Inquisitor is old and tired, for the knowledge he possesses is bitter. He knows that men are lazy rather than cowardly and that they prefer peace and death to the liberty of discerning between good and evil. He has pity, a cold pity, for the silent prisoner whom history endlessly deceives. He urges him to speak, to recognize his misdeeds, and, in one sense, to approve the actions of the Inquisitors and of the Caesars. But the prisoner does not speak. Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion

„All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.“

— Albert Camus
Context: All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion. At very most, such a mind will consent to use past experience as a basis for its future actions.

„I start out here from the principle of his innocence.
That innocence is to be feared.“

— Albert Camus
Context: There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence. That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.

„And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.“

— Albert Camus
Context: 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. "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

„Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living.“

— Albert Camus
Context: I don't know why, but something inside me snapped. I started yelling at the top of my lungs, and I insulted him and told him not to waste his prayers on me. I grabbed him by the collar of his cassock. I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy. He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so? It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. <!-- translated by Matthew Ward

„Don't let them tell us stories.“

„Even before the bomb, one did not breathe too easily in this tortured world. Now we are given a new source of anguish; it has all the promise of being our greatest anguish ever.“

— Albert Camus
Context: Even before the bomb, one did not breathe too easily in this tortured world. Now we are given a new source of anguish; it has all the promise of being our greatest anguish ever. There can be no doubt that humanity is being offered its last chance. Perhaps this is an occasion for the newspapers to print a special edition. More likely, it should be cause for a certain amount of reflection and a great deal of silence.