Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?

— Albert Camus on Meaning

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?" in the context of "Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Meaning" (Quotes: Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author, A - F) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Albert Camus

About Albert Camus

Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960) was a French Pied-Noir author, absurdist philosopher and winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature.