"The mind's first step is to distinguish what is true from what is false. However, as soon as thought reflects itself, what it first discovers is a contradiction.... The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feelings in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat's universe is not the universe of the ant-hill. The truism 'All thought is anthropomorphic' has no other meaning. Likewise the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought. If man realised that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled."
Extract from The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus (pages 22-23)
I highlighted some parts of the quote that I thought were most pithy. Enjoy.
