"The moment we believe we've understood everything grants us the look of a murderer."

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!”

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

“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.”

“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

"I don't believe you until you tell me, do you really believe, for example, if they say they are Catholic, "Do you really believe that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ? A…"

— Richard Dawkins

Science1941

#religion

"Don't you bully me with your politeness! Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to…"

— Yann Martel

Literature1963

#life

"For three years I studied very assiduously an Arabic dialect spoken by the Bedouins of the Sahara, and I began by writing this language phonetically in Latin characters; the very strange appearance of…"

— Jean Dubuffet

Art1901–1985

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"We would learn more by looking at America. Oddly enough, statistics appear only in times of agitation and distress. Their function would appear to be that of omens of worse to come. We seem to have a …"

— Rose Wilder Lane

Literature1886–1968

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