Emil M. Cioran: Trending quotes

“Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.”

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.”

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.”

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“"What is truth?" is a fundamental question. But what is it compared to "How to endure life?" And even this one pales beside the next: "How to endure oneself?" - That is the crucial question in which no one is in a position to give us an answer.”

History and Utopia (1960)

“Once we reject lyricism, to blacken a page becomes an ordeal: what's the use of writing in order to say exactly what we had to say?”

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“What we want is not freedom but its appearances. It is for these simulacra that man has always striven. And since freedom, as has been said, is no more than a sensation, what difference is there between being free and believing ourselves free?”

History and Utopia (1960)

“I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.”

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“As long as I live I shall not allow myself to forget that I shall die; I am waiting for death so that I can forget about it.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.”

Tears and Saints (1937)

“It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.”

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“You are forgiven everything provided you have a trade, a subtitle to your name, a seal on your nothingness.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream.”

A Short History of Decay (1949)

“Say what we will, death is the best thing nature has found to please everyone. With each of us, everything vanishes, everything stops forever. What an advantage, what an abuse! Without the least effort on our part, we own the universe, we drag it into our own disappearance. No doubt about it, dying is immoral…”

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass — which is better than trying to fill them.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Glory — once achieved, what is it worth?”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.”

History and Utopia (1960)

“That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.”

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)