8 Important Quotes of Albert Camus
“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.”
The French-Algerian philosopher, novelist and Nobel laureate Albert Camus is widely considered a dark thinker. I think the main reasons for that are his deep existentialism -which, I think, goes deeper than that of his mentor Jean-Paul Sartre- and his comments on the taboo topic of suicide.
While he never urged anyone to commit suicide the fact that he dared try to ‘untaboo’ it by drawing some dark humor out of it (“Should I kill myself or make coffee?”) probably did not help his case.
The real Albert Camus, though, is quite different. He was a vivid, luminous voice, with hope, friendship, love, freedom and life itself always being at the center of his philosophy and fiction:
“Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead. Walk beside me… like a friend.”
“Live to the point of tears.”
While he did dress much of the above with his theory of ‘absurdism’ that was his very own way of ‘trying to make sense out of a senseless world.’ Some misinterpret Camus’ absurdism as ‘desperatism’. Nothing could be further from the truth. Camus was big on hope:
