"Of all calumnies the worst is the one which attacks our indolence, which contests its authenticity."

Emil Cioran Philosophy See all quotes by Emil Cioran →

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“Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!”

“Freedom can be manifested only in the void of beliefs, in the absence of axioms, and only where the laws have no more authority than a hypothesis.”

“Losing love is so rich a philosophical ordeal that it makes a hairdresser into a rival of Socrates.”

“Only the idiot is equipped to breathe.”

“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”

“The more one is obsessed with God, the less one is innocent. Nobody bothered about him in paradise. The fall brought about this divine torture. It's not possible to be conscious of divinity without guilt. Thus God is rarely to be found in an innocent soul.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Critical power...tends to make an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true, yet true by compariso…"

— Matthew Arnold

Literature1822–1888

#truth

"Men don’t know anything! Men don’t know when their lives became so entirely awful, when everyone else turned into such a tosser! A man does not know how he came by the half a pie he is holding in his …"

— Dylan Moran

Entertainment1971

#mind

"So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other."

— Samuel Johnson

Literature1709–1784

#truth

"God, as Descartes justly said, we know! but what is man? The schools answered:— Man is a rational animal! So was apparently a dog, or a bee, or a beaver, none of which seemed to need churches. Modern …"

— Henry Adams

Politics1838–1918

#life