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About this quote

What does it mean?
Even if history lacks meaning, individuals can give their own lives meaning through action.
In plain terms
If history is meaningless, we can still make our lives meaningful.
What can you take from it?
Personal agency creates purpose.

Where it applies

  • career decisions
  • personal crisis

Putting it to work

  • set personal goals
  • act with intention

Questions to consider

  • How can we find meaning in mundane tasks?
  • What actions best reflect personal values?

Another view

It may overlook structural constraints on individual agency.

More from Albert Camus

  1. If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political …

    Permalink to quote #151
  2. If something worth living for is worth dying for, what about something not worth dying for?

    Permalink to quote #153
  3. If our age admits, with equanimity, that murder has its justifications, it is because of this indifference to life which is the mark of nihilism.

    Permalink to quote #150

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