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 believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.
Interpretation
Truth is often complex and contradictory, suggesting that understanding it requires grappling with conflict.
In this quote, Georges Bataille suggests that the essence of truth is inherently contradictory and tumultuous. He implies that to truly grasp the nature of truth, one must confront the violent tensions and conflicts that it embodies, rather than seeking a simplistic or singular understanding. This perspective challenges the notion of an absolute truth, instead emphasizing the chaotic and multifaceted reality of human experience.
In practice
A speaker might use this quote to challenge the audience's perception of truth in a debate about moral relativism.
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.
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.
What does physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its practitioners? β A violation bordering on death, bordering on murder?
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.
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.
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
No rose without a thorn but many a thorn without a rose.
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
Isn't it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are.
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest.
The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it.
It takes no effort to love. The state has its own innate joy. Questions answer themselves if you are aware enough. Life is safe; flowing with the current of being is the simplest way to live. Resistance never really succeeds. Controlling the flow of life is impossible.
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