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If everyone had seen through everything, if everyone had "understood," history would have ceased long since. But we are fundamentally, biologically unsuited to "understand." And even if everyone understood except for one, history would be perpetuated because of that one, because of his blindness. Because of a single illusion!

— Emil Cioran The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

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Philosophy

More quotes by Emil Cioran

The poor, by thinking unceasingly of money, reach the point of losing the spiritual advantages of non-possession, thereby sinking as low as the rich.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.

The Fall Into Time (1964)

Love, a tacit agreement between two unhappy parties to overestimate each other.

The Fall Into Time (1964)

There is only this swarm of dying creatures stricken with longevity, all the more hateful in that they are so good at organizing their agony.

The Fall Into Time (1964)

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

All Emil Cioran quotes →

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

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