The Fall

by Albert Camus

I am inclined to see religion rather as a huge laundering venture—as

Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.

There are always reasons for murdering a man. On the contrary, it is impossible to justify his living.

crime consists less in making others die than in not dying oneself!—brought

The world’s order likewise is ambiguous.

in certain cases, carrying on, merely continuing, is superhuman.

too many people now climb onto the cross merely to be seen from a greater distance,

the judges of all species, those of Christ and those of the Antichrist, who are the same anyway,

He who clings to a law does not fear the judgment that reinstates him in an order he believes in.

it’s very hard to disentangle the true from the false in what I’m saying. I admit you are right.

Don’t lies eventually lead to the truth?

And don’t all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don’t they all have the same meaning?

So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what...

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

“Who among us,” he asked, “has the most failings?” As a joke, I raised my hand and was the only one to do so.

The others agreed, in fun, but with a trace of seriousness all the same.

In any case, I exercised my pontificate for several weeks, with increasing seriousness.

I discovered then that it was not so easy as I thought to be a pope, and I remembered this just yesterday after having given you such a scornful speech on judges, our brothers.

Other groups, political or sectarian, had formed, and each prisoner favored his comrades. I was consequently led to favor mine, and this was a little concession to begin with.

yes, I loved him, or so it seems to me.

But I drank the water, that’s certain, while convincing myself that the others needed me more than this fellow who was going to die anyway and that I had a duty to keep myself alive for them. Thus, cher, empires and churches are born under the sun of death.

My great idea is that one must forgive the pope.

One can be sure of nothing, as I’ve told you.

Formerly I didn’t lock my apartment or my car. I didn’t lock up my money; I didn’t cling to what I owned.

To tell the truth, I was a little ashamed t...

“Property, gentlemen, i...

Not being sufficiently big-hearted to share my wealth with a deserving poor man, I left it at the ...

Today, moreover, I posses...

Hence I am not worried about my safety, but about myself and ...

I first advised our friend to hang it in a place of honor, and for a long time, while they were being looked for throughout the world, our devout judges sat enthroned at Mexico City above the drunks and pimps.

no one could distinguish the copy from the original and hence no one is wronged by my misconduct.

False judges are held up to the world’s admiration and I alone know the true ones.

I thus have a chance of being sent to prison—an attract...

Justice being definitively separated from innocence—the

Is not the great thing that stands in the way of our escaping it the fact that we are the first to condemn ourselves?

Since, nevertheless, they cannot keep themselves from judging, they make up for it by moralizing. In short, their satanism is virtuous.

every act should be ordered, that good and evil should be arbitrarily, hence obviously, pointed out.

I, too, learned that I was afraid of freedom.

Death is solitary, whereas slavery is collective.

slavery is not immediately realizable.

The judgment you are passing on others eventually snaps back in your face, causing some damage.

one couldn’t condemn others without immediately judging oneself,

Inasmuch as every judge some day ends up as a penitent, one had to travel the road in the opposite direction and practice the profession of penitent to be able to end up as a judge.

I accuse myself up and down. It’s not hard, for I now have acquired a memory.

I adapt my words to my listener and lead him to go me one better.

I choose the features we have in common, the experiences we have endured together, the failings we share—good

the portrait I hold out to my contemporaries becomes a mirror.

I am like them, to be sure; we are in the soup together. However, I have a superiority in that I know it

The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you. Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden.

I have accepted duplicity instead of being upset about it.