Sergei Eisenstein Quotes

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

That which is cannot be true.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of the truth ... They may serve in turn to represent the facts without ever entering into direct conflict.

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

Truth stands for the fact, nonviolence negates the fact.

Wizard's Ninth Rule A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.

Paradoxes are the only truths.

A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.

Windbags can be right. Aphorists can be wrong. It is a tough world.

Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being. Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.

Truth is always paradoxical.

Everything is illusion. Even that last sentence.

To philosophize with open eyes is to philosophize in the dark. Only the blind can look straight at the sun.

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?

Well, sir, if things are real, they’re there all the time." "Are they?" said the Professor; and Peter did not quite know what to say.

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

If there is existence, there must be non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time before that - when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or non-existence?

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

The truth is rarely true and never simple.

Forced to recognize our inhumanity, our reason coexists with our insanity. And though we choose between reality and madness, it's either sadness or euphoria.

The Truth lies not in the Yes and not in the No, but in the knowledge and the beginning from which the Yes and the No arise.

I know my soul hath power to know all things, Yet is she blind and ignorant in all: I know I'm one of Nature's little kings, Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.

All true knowledge contradicts common sense.