Quote #130

For some time the entire effort of our philosophers has aimed solely at replacing the notion of human nature with that of situation, and replacing ancient harmony with the disorderly advance of chance or reason's pitiless progress. Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

More from Albert Camus

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  2. For twenty centuries the sum total of evil has not diminished in the world.
  3. For capital punishment to be really intimidating, human nature would have to be different; it would have to be as stable and serene as the …
  4. From my first articles to my latest book I have written so much, and perhaps too much, only because I cannot keep from being drawn toward e…
  5. Every ethic based on solitude implies the exercise of power.
  6. From the evening breeze to this hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth. Consciousness illuminates it by paying attention to it.
  7. Every act of creation, by its mere existence, denies the world of master and slave. The appalling society of tyrants and slaves in which we…
  8. From the humanitarian idylls of the eighteenth century to the bloodstained gallows the way leads directly; and the executioners of today, a…

All Albert Camus quotes