Emile M. Cioran

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

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

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

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

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

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

We interest others by the misfortune we spread around us.

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.

Ennui is the echo in us of time tearing itself apart.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

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

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?

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

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

No one recovers from the disease of being born, a deadly wound if there ever was one.

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

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.