From Camus's Nobel banquet speech: "Each generation, no doubt, believes it is destined to remake the world. My own knows, however, that it will not remake it. But its task is perhaps greater. It consists in preventing the world from falling apart." https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1957/camus/speech/ (French & Eng)
In these dark times, Camus's speech is worth reading in full, even if it loses something in the official translation (amended above). I've rendered 'vouée à refaire' as 'destined to remake' rather than 'called upon to reform', &'se défaire' (lit. 'come undone') as 'fall apart' vs 'destroy itself'.
It was only thanks to Germain that Camus was able to go to secondary school, which his poor working-class family (his widowed mother was a domestic cleaner) couldn't afford. Germain persuaded them to let the boy study for a scholarship rather than sending him out to work, and gave him free coaching.
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