To feel absolutely right is the beginning of the end.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that certainty can lead to stagnation and the end of exploration or growth.
Albert Camus implies that when one feels completely certain and right about something, it may hinder further questioning and growth. This absolute confidence can result in a closed mindset, where new ideas and perspectives are not considered, ultimately leading to the end of progress and understanding. The quest for knowledge and truth requires an openness to challenge one's beliefs and to embrace uncertainty.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of keeping an open mind during a debate.
The Poor Man whom everyone speaks of, the Poor Man whom everyone pities, one of the repulsive Poor from whom charitable souls keep their distance, he has still said nothing. Or, rather, he has spoken through the voice of Victor Hugo, Zola, Richepin. At least, they said so. And these shameful impostures fed their authors. Cruel irony, the Poor Man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds.
Between history and the eternal I have chosen history because I like certainties. Of it, at least, I am certain, and how can I deny this force crushing me.
Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.
A single sentence will suffice for modern man. He fornicated and read the papers. After that vigorous definition, the subject will be, if I may say so, exhausted.
At times I feel myself overtaken by an immense tenderness for these people around me who live in the same century.
The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
How oft, in nations gone corrupt, And by their own devices brought down to servitude, That man chooses bondage before liberty. Bondage with ease before strenuous liberty.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air beat upward to god's throne in loud access of shrieking and reproach
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in a stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across the eternal seas of space and time.
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