Philosophy Quote by Emil M. Cioran — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“All great conversions are born from the sudden revelation of life's meaninglessness. Nothing could be more moving or more impressive than this sudden apprehension of the void of existence.”

“We should repeat to ourselves, every day: I am one of the billions dragging himself across the earth's surface. One, and no more. This banality justifies any conclusion, any behavior or action: debauchery, chastity, suicide, work, crime, sloth, or rebellion...Whence it follows that each man is right to do what he does.”

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

“If it is true that by death we once more become what we were before being, would it not have been better to abide by that pure possibility, not to stir from it? What use was this detour, when we might have remained forever in an unrealized plenitude?”

“Life is a bitter sweet journey my friend, a bitter sweet journey.”

“Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.”

“And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring.”

“The greatest skeptic must now admit that the land and sea-borne trade of India had given her a world-wide fame not only for her gold, spices and silk, but for her religions and philosophies also.”

“In so far as the culture industry arouses a feeling of well-being that the world is precisely in that order suggested by the culture industry, the substitute gratification which it prepares for human beings cheats them out of the same happiness which it deceitfully projects.”