The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
Georges BatailleRead
A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that individual judgments about life are subjective and can become meaningless in the chaos of collective opinion.
Georges Bataille's quote reflects on the nature of truth and judgment in life, asserting that the last voice to speak holds the ultimate truth in a discussion. It implies that in a cacophony of opinions, real understanding and peace can only be achieved when no single voice dominates, leading to a sense of collective disarray where judgment becomes irrelevant and everyone is drowned out in the noise.
Themes
TruthJudgmentChaosOpinionPeace
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about societal norms, you might invoke this quote to illustrate how personal truths can become lost in collective noise.
More from Georges Bataille
All quotes →I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.
Georges BatailleRead
What does physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its practitioners? – A violation bordering on death, bordering on murder?
Georges BatailleRead
It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
Georges BatailleRead
I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.
Georges BatailleRead
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges BatailleRead
Similar quotes
Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.
Samuel AdamsRead
People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer.
Eve EnslerRead
If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.
Errico MalatestaRead
It is inconceivable that the God who gives Himself in His Son to save us, should have created some people ordained to evil and damnation. There can only be one predestination to salvation. In and through Jesus Christ all people are predestined to be saved. Our free choice is ruled out in this regard. God wants free people, except in relation to this last and definitive decision. We are not free to decide and choose to be damned.
Jacques EllulRead
Had the news of salvation by Jesus Christ been inscribed on the face of the sun and the moon, in characters that all nations would have understood, the whole earth had known it in twenty-four hours, and all nations would have believed it; whereas, though it is now almost two thousand years since, as they tell us, Christ came upon earth, not a twentieth part of the people of the earth know anything of it, and among those who do, the wiser part do not believe it.
Thomas PaineRead
It turns out that globalisation, while promising sameness through brand-name consumption, was fostering, through uneven economic growth, an intense feeling of difference.
Pankaj MishraRead