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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Knowledge can confine us by creating a dependency on external validation and context.
In this quote, Georges Bataille expresses the idea that knowledge, rather than liberating us, can actually bind us in a servile relationship to time and societal expectations. He suggests that meaning is often derived from a linear progression where each moment is only significant in relation to those that come before or after, implying that this interconnectedness can inhibit true freedom and individuality.
Themes
KnowledgeServilityMeaningLifeContextFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be shared during a discussion on the limitations of formal education.
More from Georges Bataille
All quotes →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.
Georges BatailleRead
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
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges BatailleRead
Similar quotes
Death is contagious; it is contracted the moment we are conceived.
Madeleine L'EngleRead
It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.
Antonin ArtaudRead
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
Jonathan SwiftRead
Yesterday is gone and took away its tale. _x000D_ Today we must live a fresh story again.
RumiRead
If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.
Oscar WildeRead
Today Christmas has become a commercial celebration, whose bright lights hide the mystery of God’s humility, which in turn calls us to humility and simplicity. Let us ask the Lord to help us see through the superficial glitter of this season, and to discover behind it the child in the stable in Bethlehem, so as to find true joy and true light.
Pope Benedict XviRead