Emil Cioran Quotes

Emil Cioran

Profession : Philosopher

Birth : April 8, 1911

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.

Emil Cioran

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

Emil Cioran

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran

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

Emil Cioran