Albert Camus Nihilism Quotes & Sayings

If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning. — Albert Camus

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate. — Albert Camus

If we believe in nothing, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. — Albert Camus

We are living in the era of premeditation and the perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary, they are adults and the have the perfect alibi: philosophy, which can be used for any purpose - even for transforming murderers into judges. — Albert Camus

The time is approaching when we shall have to struggle for the domination of
the world, and this struggle will be fought in the name of philosophical principles. In these words he
announced the twentieth century. But he was able to announce it because he was warned by the interior
logic of nihilism and knew that one of its aims was ascendancy; and thus he prepared the way for this
ascendancy. — Albert Camus

On the level of
history, as in individual life, murder is thus a desperate exception or it is nothing. The disturbance that it
brings to the order of things offers no hope of a future; it is an exception and therefore it can be neither
utilitarian nor systematic as the purely historical attitude would have it. It is the limit that can be reached
but once, after which one must die. The rebel has only one way of reconciling himself with his act of
murder if he allows himself to be led into performing it: to accept his own death and sacrifice. He kills
and dies so that it shall be clear that murder is impossible. He demonstrates that, in reality, he prefers the
"We are" to the "We shall be." The calm happiness of Kaliayev in his prison, the serenity of Saint-Just
when he walks toward the scaffold, are explained in their turn. Beyond that farthest frontier, con-tradition
and nihilism begin. — Albert Camus

If nihilism is the inability to believe, then its most serious symptom is not found in atheism, but in the inability to believe in what is, to see what is happening, and to live life as it is offered. This infirmity is at the root of all idealism. Morality has no faith in the world. — Albert Camus

One cannot be a part-time nihilist. — Albert Camus

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism. — Albert Camus