Consulting the Archives...
Generating fresh insights specifically for this topic.
This may take a moment.
Generating fresh insights specifically for this topic.
This may take a moment.
Albert Camus, forged in the crucible of French Algeria and scarred by the moral ambiguities of World War II, grappled relentlessly with the human search for purpose. Witnessing firsthand the absurdity of violence, colonialism, and resistance shaped his existentialist thought. This wasn’t an abstract intellectual exercise for Camus; it was a visceral reaction to a world seemingly devoid of inherent meaning. How, he wondered, could one find purpose in a reality stripped bare of God, reason, or preordained destiny? He challenged readers to confront this existential void, not with despair, but with rebellion and a conscious construction of personal meaning.
"Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present."
"The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning."
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
"I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But I know that something in it has a meaning and that is man."
"The only thing that is important is to be able to sacrifice everything for an idea."
"There is no being who, at some time or other, has not felt the need to be a god."
"There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die, it orients everything."
"Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present."
"In order to exist, man must rebel."
"I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my liberty, and my passion."
"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
"Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions will have need of beauty."
"In the middle of a world of collapse, I was trying to find a reason for living."
"Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies."
"I rebel; therefore we exist."
"If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life."
"Peace is the only battle worth waging."
"Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is."
"The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world."
"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
"A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world."
"The only way to fight the plague is with decency."
"Generosity towards the future lies in giving everything to the present."
"Life is the sum of all your choices."
"Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being."
"To create is to live twice."
"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."
"Living is keeping the absurd alive."
"One cannot create without also creating oneself."
"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
"The struggle itself... is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
Seeing how Albert Camus approaches Purpose helps you apply the idea with more precision.
Pick one quote to guide a decision today, then return for deeper perspective.
Search More
Jump to another topic, author, or pillar without leaving the archive.
"Use this collection whenever you need Albert Camus's lens on Purpose."