A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
A golden rule: to leave an incomplete image of oneself.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, Chaos is being yourself.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Each concession we make is accompanied by an inner diminution of which we are not immediately conscious.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
My mission is to kill time, and time's to kill me in its turn. How comfortable one is among murderers.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Negation is the mind's first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
One hardly saves a world without ruling it.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Our first intuitions are the true ones.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Sperm is a bandit in its pure state.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
The mind is the result of the torments the flesh undergoes or inflicts upon itself.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
The more we try to rest ourselves from our Egos, the deeper we sink into it.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
To exist is a habit I do not despair of acquiring.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Torment, for some men, is a need, an appetite, and an accomplishment.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Under each formula lies a corpse.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
We are born to Exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
We derive our vitality from our store of madness.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
We inhabit a language rather than a country.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
We interest others by the misfortune we spread around us.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
We understand God by everything in ourselves that is fragmentary, incomplete, and inopportune.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Word - that invisible dagger.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
- Emile M. Cioran Quote
