374 Quotes by Emile M. Cioran

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

Tyranny destroys or strengthens the individual; freedom enervates him, until he becomes no more than a puppet. Man has more chances of saving himself by hell than by paradise.

Self-conscious rejection of the absolute is the best way to resist God; thus illusion, the substance of life, is saved.

Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

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

To defy heredity is to defy billions of years, to defy the first cell

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.

If we manage to last in spite of everything, it is because our infirmities are so many and so contradictory that they cancel each other out.

We are all geniuses when we dream.