Albert Camus (; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French pied-noir author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay "The Rebel" that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. Although often cited as a proponent of existentialism, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label. In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."
In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement after his split with Garry Davis's Citizens of the World movement, of which the surrealist André Breton was also a member. The formation of this group, according to Camus, was intended to "denounce two ideologies found in both the USSR and the USA" regarding their idolatry of technology.
Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times". He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award. He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.
Read more about Albert Camus: Early Years, Literary Career, Revolutionary Union Movement and Europe, Death, Summary of Absurdism, Ideas On The Absurd, Opposition To Totalitarianism, Football
Famous quotes by albert camus:
“Knowing what [Christ] knew , knowing all about mankind—ah! who would have thought that the crime is not so much to make others die, but to die oneself—confronted day and night with his innocent crime, it became too difficult to go on. It was better to get it over with, to not defend himself, to die, in order not to be the only one to have survived, and to go elsewhere, where, perhaps, he would be supported.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“[Sympathy] is easy to get, and it is not binding. ‘You have my sympathy’, and inside we say, ‘and now let us move on to something else.’”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“It was undoubtedly the feeling of exile—that sensation of a void within which never left us, that irrational longing to hark back to the past or else to speed up the march of time, and those keen shafts of memory that stung like fire.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“Ah! my friend, for whomever is alone, without a god and without a master, the weight of time is terrible. One must then choose a master, God being out of style.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)