374 Quotes by Emile M. Cioran

The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.

To think is to take a cunning revenge in which we camouflage our baseness and conceal our lower instincts.

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

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

I don’t understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

Were we to undertake an exhaustive self-scrutiny, disgust would paralyze us, we would be doomed to a thankless existence.

We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself — there is no wish I make more often.