“It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.”

—  Emil M. Cioran , book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

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 "It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we mu…" by Emil M. Cioran?
Emil M. Cioran photo
Emil M. Cioran 531
Romanian philosopher and essayist 1911–1995

Related quotes

William Osler photo

“The search of science for the spirits has been neither long nor earnest; nor is it a matter of surprise that it has not been undertaken earlier by men whose training had fitted them for the work.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

Science and Immortality (1904)
Context: The search of science for the spirits has been neither long nor earnest; nor is it a matter of surprise that it has not been undertaken earlier by men whose training had fitted them for the work.
It is no clear, vasty deep, but a muddy, Acheronian pool in which our modern spirits dwell, with Circe as the presiding deity and the Witch of Endor as her high priestess. Commingling with the solemn incantations of the devotees who throng the banks, one can hear the mocking laughter of Puck and of Ariel, as they play among the sedges and sing the monotonous refrain, "What fools these mortals be!" Sadly besmirched, and more fitted for a sojourn in Ancyra than in Athens, has been the condition of those who have returned from the quest, and we cannot wonder that scientific men have hesitated to stir the pool and risk a touch from Circe's wand. All the more honour to those who have with honest effort striven to pierce the veil and explore the mysteries which lie behind it.

M. C. Escher photo

“As long as there have been men.... upon this globe.... we have held firmly to the notion of.... all of which must continue to be everlasting in time and infinite in space.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

Quote of Escher, 1959; as cited in '3. The approach to infinity' http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Winter2009/Mihai/section3.html, in: M.C. Escher and Hyperbolic Geometry http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Winter2009/Mihai/index.html - Math Explorer Club
1950's

Paulo Coelho photo

“We have been moving along at such a fast pace that we no longer know what we are doing. Now we have to wait until our soul catches up with us.”

Paulo Coelho Maktub

Source: Maktub

Bertrand Russell photo

“Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 6: On the Scientific Method in Philosophy

“Perhaps the most important lesson that we can learn from information history is that information provision has been and must be closely related to information need, and that the information sources we provide must be closely matched to the tasks being undertaken by the community served.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information history – an introduction (2009), p. 246.

J. R. D. Tata photo

“Road to Social Justice. The first and perhaps the most important of the factors which have contributed to our failure to make real impact on poverty expressed in terms of total number who live below the poverty line has clearly been the uncontrolled growth of our population… First, we must, at all costs, make a much more earnest effort at controlling the growth of our population. As it is, we are running out of time and there is no longer any possibility of preventing it from exceeding 1,000 million souls by the end of the century.”

J. R. D. Tata (1904–1993) Indian businessman

At The International Seminar of Economic Journalists, New Delhi, December 5, 1972.
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

“The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact …that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)
Context: The world in which we live is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact... that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction.... in a world without spiritual or intellectual order, nothing is unbelievable; nothing is predictable, and therefore, nothing comes as a particular surprise.... The medieval world was... not without a sense of order. Ordinary men and women... had no doubt that there was such a design, and their priests were well able, by deduction from a handful of principles, to make it, if not rational, at least coherent.... The situation we are presently in is much different.... sadder and more confusing and certainly more mysterious.... There is no consistent, integrated conception of the world which serves as the foundation on which our edifice of belief rests. And therefore... we are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

George Eliot photo

“No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it
are no longer the same interpreters.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator
Kenneth Goldsmith photo

“The Internet has been accused of making us shallow. We’re skimming, not reading. We lack the ability to engage deeply with a subject anymore. That’s both true and not true: we skim and browse certain types of content, and read others carefully. Oftentimes, we’ll save a long form journalism article and read it later offline, perhaps on the train home from work.”

Kenneth Goldsmith (1961) American writer

Wasting Time on the Internet, 2016

“Someday we’ll realize, perhaps much to our surprise, the keys to free a smile have been with us all the while: look for good, and spread that good around.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"Piles of Smiles"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

Related topics