Emile M. Cioran Ideas Quotations

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

We change ideas like neckties.

The amount of chiaroscuro an idea harbors is the only index of its profundity.

The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.

A sensation must have fallen very low to deign to turn into an idea.

All great ideas should be followed by an exclamation mark - a warning signal similar to the skull and crossbones drawn on high-voltage transformers.

Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said. Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.

Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

The only way of enduring one disaster after the next is to love the very idea of disaster: if we succeed, there are no further surprises, we are superior to whatever occurs, we are invincible victims.