Emil Cioran

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned, chaos is being yourself.

Revenge is not always sweet, once it is consummated we feel inferior to our victim.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

In order to have the stuff of a tyrant, a certain mental derangement is necessary.

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.

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

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

When we cannot be delivered from ourselves, we delight in devouring ourselves.

The limit of every pain is an even greater pain.

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

I saw that philosophy had no power to make my life more bearable. Thus I lost my belief in philosophy.

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

God - a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays.

Glory - once achieved, what is it worth?

Woes and wonders of Power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.