Emile M. Cioran Quotes | GloryQuotes

Emile M. Cioran Quotes About Life

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

Emile M. Cioran

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

Emile M. Cioran

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

Emile M. Cioran

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

Emile M. Cioran

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

Emile M. Cioran

You are done for - a living dead man - not when you stop loving but stop hating. Hatred preserves: in it, in its chemistry, resides the mystery of life.

Emile M. Cioran

Emile M. Cioran Quotes About Fear

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.

Emile M. Cioran

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

Emile M. Cioran

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

Emile M. Cioran

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

Emile M. Cioran

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

Emile M. Cioran

More Quotes by Emile M. Cioran

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

Emile M. Cioran

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

Emile M. Cioran

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

Emile M. Cioran

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

Emile M. Cioran

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

Emile M. Cioran

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

Emile M. Cioran

Man must vanquish himself, must do himself violence, in order to perform the slightest action untainted by evil.

Emile M. Cioran

For you who no longer posses it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.

Emile M. Cioran

We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.

Emile M. Cioran

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

Emile M. Cioran

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

Emile M. Cioran

My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.

Emile M. Cioran

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

Emile M. Cioran

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

Emile M. Cioran

The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.

Emile M. Cioran

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

Emile M. Cioran

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Emile M. Cioran

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

Emile M. Cioran

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

Emile M. Cioran

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

Emile M. Cioran

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

Emile M. Cioran

We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.

Emile M. Cioran

God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

Emile M. Cioran

Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.

Emile M. Cioran

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.

Emile M. Cioran

Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.

Emile M. Cioran

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade tot he void.

Emile M. Cioran

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

Emile M. Cioran

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?

Emile M. Cioran

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.

Emile M. Cioran

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

Emile M. Cioran

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

Emile M. Cioran

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

Emile M. Cioran

To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.

Emile M. Cioran

Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.

Emile M. Cioran

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

Emile M. Cioran

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

Emile M. Cioran

We die in proportion to the words we fling around us.

Emile M. Cioran

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

Emile M. Cioran

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

Emile M. Cioran

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.

Emile M. Cioran

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

Emile M. Cioran

The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.

Emile M. Cioran

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

Emile M. Cioran

It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other.

Emile M. Cioran

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

Emile M. Cioran

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

Emile M. Cioran

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

Emile M. Cioran

Browse 103 quotes attributed to Emile M. Cioran, listed in the source data as a Romanian Philosopher, organized around themes such as Life, Fear, Freedom. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.