Quote #140

Historical reasoning is not a type of reasoning that, within the framework of its own functions, can pass judgment on the world. While pretending to judge it, it really tries to determine its course. Essentially a part of events, it directs them and is simultaneously pedagogic and all-conquering.

More from Albert Camus

  1. Heraclitus, the discoverer of the constant change of things, nevertheless set a limit to this perpetual process. This limit was symbolized …
  2. Historical thought was to deliver man from subjection to a divinity; but this liberation demanded of him the most absolute subjection to hi…
  3. He who rejects the entire past, without keeping any part of it which could serve to breathe life into the revolution, condemns himself to f…
  4. History without a value to transfigure it, is controlled by the law of expediency.
  5. He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.
  6. History, undoubtedly, is one of the limits of man's experience; in this sense the revolutionaries are right. But man, by rebelling, imposes…
  7. Half a man's life is spent in implying, in turning away, and in keeping silent.
  8. I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false. But at least it…

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