"What place do we occupy in the "universe"? A point, if that! Why reproach ourselves when we are evidently so insignificant? Once we make this observation, we grow calm at once: henceforth, no more bother, no more frenzy, metaphysical or otherwise. And then that point dilates, swells, substitutes itself for space. And everything begins all over again."

Emil Cioran Philosophy See all quotes by Emil Cioran →

quotekg

React to this quote

More by Emil Cioran

“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.”

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

“Only the idiot is equipped to breathe.”

“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

"This, then, is how one must imagine the punitive city. At the crossroads, in the gardens, at the side of roads being repaired or bridges built, in workshops open to all, in the depths of mines that ma…"

— Michel Foucault

Literature1926–1984

#time

"I do not contest that this top-down instrumental use for pure politics was being made to some degree; but to reduce the entire process of cultural evolution to a matter of politics betrays a profound …"

— Rajiv Malhotra

Literature1950

#wisdom

"I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."

— John Adams

Politics1947

#wisdom

"Tereshkova was the first woman in space. She completed 48 orbits of the Earth, she spent 2 days 22 hrs 50 mins in space during her first and only orbital mission, she is – to date – the only woman to …"

— Valentina Tereshkova

Politics1937

#time