504 Quotes by Emil Cioran

If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: “I want to be praised.”

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

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

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

I have always struggled, with the sole intention of ceasing to struggle. Result: zero.

Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you’d prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

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