Emil Cioran Quotes

No, it's a Bb. It looks wrong and it sounds wrong, but it's right.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

If you look at the history of big obstacles in understanding our world, there's usually an intuitive assumption underlying them that's wrong.

People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

They would hear 3000 and think it was the year 3000, I was hoping it would sort of disorient them and prepare them for the strange message they were about to receive.

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused.

Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.

I think I'm pretty misunderstoood.

Understanding is but the sum of misunderstandings.

Your enemy is one who misunderstands you; why should you not rise above the fog and see his error and respect him for the good qualities you find in him?

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

Life is a long failure of understanding ... a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

The birds did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

Understanding' is merely the sum total of our misunderstandings.

It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite.

I'm alive but I have no life. I'm alive but also dead. I'm dead and alive.

There are ... two kinds of people in this world, those who long to be understood and those who long to be misunderstood. It is the irony of life that neither is gratified.

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

Understanding, as we understand it, is misunderstanding.

The world progresses only through misunderstanding.

Imperfect understanding is often more dangerous than ignorance.