Emile M. Cioran Quotes

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
Emile M. Cioran

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.
Emile M. Cioran

A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
Emile M. Cioran

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

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

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.
Emile M. Cioran

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter.
Emile M. Cioran

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.
Emile M. Cioran

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.
Emile M. Cioran

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

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

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

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
Emile M. Cioran

Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
Emile M. Cioran

Everything is pathology, except for indifference.
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

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?
Emile M. Cioran

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

I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a St. Paul.
Emile M. Cioran

I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.
Emile M. Cioran

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.
Emile M. Cioran

I'm simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?
Emile M. Cioran

If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
Emile M. Cioran

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

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

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

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.
Emile M. Cioran

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?
Emile M. Cioran

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

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
Emile M. Cioran

Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion.
Emile M. Cioran

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.
Emile M. Cioran

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

Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy.
Emile M. Cioran

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

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

Maniacs of Procreation, bipeds with devalued faces, we have lost all appeal for each other.
Emile M. Cioran

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.
Emile M. Cioran

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
Emile M. Cioran

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.
Emile M. Cioran

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

Not to be obliged, like so many others, to choose between the insipid and the atrocious.
Emile M. Cioran

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

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.
Emile M. Cioran

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.
Emile M. Cioran

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

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
Emile M. Cioran

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.
Emile M. Cioran

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

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

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

Saints live in flames, wisemen, next to them.
Emile M. Cioran

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