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If I said decisively, “I have seen God,” that which I see would change. Instead of the inconceivable unknown—wildly free before me, leaving me wild and free before it—there would be a dead object and the thing of the theologian, to which the unknown would be subjugated.

— Georges Bataille Inner Experience (1954)

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More quotes by Georges Bataille

I remain in intolerable non-knowledge, which has no other way out than ecstasy itself.

L’Expérience Intérieure (1943)

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

The difficulty—that contestation must be done in the name of an authority—is resolved this: I contest in the name of contestation what experience itself is.

L’Expérience Intérieure (1943)

All eroticism has a sacramental character.

Erotism: Death and Sensuality (1962)

To choose evil is to choose freedom—“freedom, emancipation from all restraint.”

On Nietzsche (1945)

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Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

When the mind is not dissipated upon extraneous things, nor diffused over the world about us through the senses, it withdraws within itself, and of its own accord ascends to the contemplation of God.

Basil of Caesarea

Once you accept the existence of God — however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him — then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.

Morris West The Clowns of God (1981)

God seeks comrades and claims love,
the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.

Rabindranath Tagore Fireflies (1928)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Georges Bataille (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.