It consists in preventing the world from falling apart.

Camus contrasts the ambition to remake the world with the task facing his own generation after war, dictatorship and the camps. The pronoun refers to that generation’s task, which he describes in the context of nuclear destruction and political nihilism. He goes on to call for peace without servitude and a renewed connection between work and culture.

In a time capable of destroying civilization, keeping the shared world intact is already an immense responsibility.

The sentence is not a general argument against all change. Its antecedent is the responsibility of a generation living after catastrophe and under the threat of further destruction.

Society, Politics, Wisdom

• We are today in the midst of a cold war. Bernard Baruch
• This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Albert Einstein
• Refusing to lie about what one knows, and resisting oppression.
• We are now facing a problem more of ethics than of physics. Bernard Baruch
• We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. Bernard Baruch

Albert Camus, Albert Camus, speech at the Nobel Banquet, Stockholm City Hall, 10 December 1957; French text published by NobelPrize.org (copyright Éditions Gallimard). Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/prevent-the-world-from-falling-apart/ (25 October 2026).

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