Albert Caraco Quotes

Pessimism has never been in fashion because no order could stand it; it's a luxury of the mind, and thus beyond the reach of the common man.

Happiness rarely leads us to intellectual adventures. Writers and artists, not to mention philosophers, are usually dissatisfied with themselves or the world.

French, German, English and Spanish are four admirable languages and I manage to express myself in all of them with more or less skill.

We, who are not satisfied with empty words, consent to disappear, and we rejoice in our fate. We didn't choose to be born, and consider ourselves fortunate to have nowhere to outlive this life, which was imposed upon us rather than given — a life full of sorrows and pains with dubious or harmful pleasures.

I would be pleased indeed, if the universe were full of blazing ovens, and concentration camps, and people deported.

Death is not terrible, life is terrible, but we see things literally and figuratively upside down. The philosopher is the one who puts everything back in its proper place.

Original: En este pequeño libro escrito con elegancia y profundidad vemos reflejados nuestros más terribles temores y nuestros más inconfesados deseos de exterminio, sin ningún tipo de lenitivo que pudiera atenuar el asco y la desesperanza frente a una humanidad cada vez más atrofiada por una serie de valores y prácticas que irremediablemente se dirigen al caos.

I am a racist and a colonialist.

The cities we inhabit are schools of death because they are inhuman. Each has become a den of noise and stench. Each has become a chaos of buildings where we amass ourselves by the millions, losing our life's purpose. Unfortunates, with no escape, we feel that we have put ourselves, willingly or not, in the labyrinth of the absurd, from which we will only emerge dead, for our destiny is to multiply without end, only to perish in great numbers. With each turn of the wheel, the cities we inhabit advance imperceptibly towards each other, aspiring to merge into an absolute chaos of noise and stench. With each turn of the wheel, the price of land rises, and in the labyrinth that devours free space, the revenue from investments builds hundreds of walls, day after day. Since money must work and the cities we inhabit must progress, it's still legitimate for their houses to double in height with each generation, even if they lack water every two days. The builders only seek to escape the fate they are preparing for us by fleeing to the countryside.

We live for death, love for death, and give birth and toil for death. Our works and days now follow one another in the shadow of death. The discipline we adhere to, the values we uphold, and the plans we make all lead to one end: death.

Imagine a world in which thirty billion humans would live like the people in Asia, cramped into a few cities the size of France, with hundred-story buildings containing a hundred thousand rooms, where water runs for only two hours a day. Most of them would be born, live, and die in ten-unit structures, breathing air supplied by machines and consuming rather unappetizing food made of algae, cellulose, or even insects. Is it any wonder that some feel the urge to destroy everything, if only to avoid a nightmare that has now become inevitable?

L’Âge d’Homme, Lausanne (1975) p. 53

Life is no longer sacred from the moment the living become too numerous. The lives of surplus men are no more valuable than those of insects, and soldiers killed in war are no different in the eyes of those who command them.

L’Âge d’Homme, Lausanne (1975), p. 69

L’Âge d’Homme, Lausanne (1985), p. 57