“"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.”

— Emil M. Cioran

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote ""What is truth?" is a fundamental question. But what is it compared to "How to endure life?" And even this one pales be…" by Emil M. Cioran?

Emil M. Cioran photo

Emil M. Cioran 531

Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995

Related quotes

“To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 110
The Gay Science (1882)

“Fundamentally, a manager is looking to answer these questions: ‘what to change?’,’ what to change to?’ and ‘ how to cause the change?”

Eliyahu M. Goldratt (1947–2011) Israeli physicist and management guru

The goal: a process of ongoing improvement (1984)

“Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Quoted by Max Weber in his lecture "Science as a Vocation"; in Lynda Walsh (2013), Scientists as Prophets: A Rhetorical Genealogy (2013), Oxford University Press, p. 90

“There was no solution, save that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insolvable: One must live in the needs of the day--that is, forget oneself.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Source: Anna Karenina

“Besides the ‘how many?’ question, Empedocles seems to be answering two other ancient questions: ‘How did the world come to be as it now is?’ and ‘How did it come to have the creatures that it now has?’. [...] His answers are subtle and intricate.”

Catherine Rowett (1956) Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia (born 1956)

Source: Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2004), Ch. 1 : Lost words, forgotten worlds

“Today, the problem is not to produce more so you can sell more. The fundamental question is that of the product's right to exist. And it is the designer's right and duty, in the first place, to question the legitimacy of the product, and that is how he too comes to exist. Depending on what answer he comes up with, one of the most positive things a designer can do is refuse to do anything”

Philippe Starck (1949) French architect and industrial designer

Starck, 2000

“It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear (2011)

“The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.”

Chris Hedges book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

Source: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

“How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare?”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo

Source: Ecce Homo

“How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

Review of Le Misanthrope, by Molière, at the Piccadilly (1962), p. 117
Tynan Right and Left (1967)

Related topics