"A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions."

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

"According to … the French counterrevolutionaries and German Romantics, … the corpus of prejudices was a country’s cultural treasure, its ancient and tested intelligence, present as the consciousness a…"

— Alain Finkielkraut

Literature1949

#time

"We are not going to give you money you’re sitting at home every day doing nothing. We must give you jobs we must give you money, because when you work you develop self-respect and dignity"

— Mosiuoa Lekota

Politics1948–2026

#time

"I introduced what I called "outside-in problem solving," which nowadays is called "top-clown." But I prefer outside-in because outside-in allows you to have many different viewpoints instead of a sing…"

— Douglas T. Ross

Philosophy1929–2007

#time

"Few people realize the enormous but always invisible and quiet psychological leverage that new ideas have upon human consciousness; and this is especially so with teachings of a spiritual or intellect…"

— Gottfried de Purucker

Literature1874–1942

#religion