Albert Camus

Albert Camus, *1913, †1960, with iconic trenchcoat and cigarette, is the philosophic writer that personifies the cinematic image of Humphrey Bogart. He was an impoverished pied noir, who was a scholarship student. He was a member of the french resistance. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature. On a January 4th, his life ended in an automobile crash.

In his varied writings ― journalism, philosophy, plays and novels ― he was profoundly and deeply concerned with moral order. The individual man against absurd authority. The world crushes people, and the moral man rebels against this cruelty. This moral man duels all oppression.

Camus claimed the world was without God, but many of the french saw him coming closer to catholicism, a very socially active catholicism. This sisyphean struggle is more poignant then. Camus recognised, that, a man became a man by saying one word, one strong and defiant word. The man says, ‘No’.
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What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from the abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.

There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.

One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." ...
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if
we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.