Emil Cioran Quotes

Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression … How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, "a chariot wheel" which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.

Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on.

When you talk about change, you know what makes it really tough for people is on the one hand you've got tradition, and on the other hand you've got change; in many people's mind, change equals modernization. Tradition, however. I'm a big tradition guy.

Conservatism cherishes tradition; innovation fetishizes novelty. They tug in different directions, the one toward the past, the other toward the future.

If your goal is to change the world, you can't start by doing things the same old way because it sells better.

Social equity is based on justice; politics change on the opinion of the time. The black man's skin will be a mark of social inferiority so long as white men are conceited, ignorant, unjust, and prejudiced. You cannot legislate these qualities out of the white - you must steal them out by teaching, illustration, and example.

The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

The glory of each generation is to make its own precedents.

The idea of modernity is beginning to lose its vitality. It is losing it because modernity is no longer a critical attitude but an accepted, codified convention.

We who work in technology have nurtured an especially rare gift: the opportunity to effect change at an unprecedented scale and rate. Technology, community, and capitalism combine to make Silicon Valley the potential epicenter of vast positive change.

Every generation challenges the one that goes before.

I have always believed in discontent – not grumbling, which is usually selfish and individual – but a disinclination to sit down idly, knowing things are wrong.

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

We've come a long way, but there is still a lot of discrimination.

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

The only way to change something is to shock it. If you want your muscles to grow, you have to shock them. If you want society to change, you have to shock them.

Modernity is disruptive, and I endorse that.

The way I look at the world is establishment versus change agents. The establishment is those people who want to keep things the way they are. Change agents are people like me.

What is noise to the old order is harmony to the new.

On a small planet, where minute follows minute, day follows day, year follows year, where tradition marches on with a deafening, orderly beat -sometimes the order is disturbed by a dreamer, an artist, a scribbler - sometimes the beat is changed one person at a time.

These times are too progressive. Everything has changed too fast. Railroads and telegraphs and kerosene and coal stoves -- they're good to have but the trouble is, folks get to depend on 'em.

Old ways will always remain unless some one invents a new way and then lives and dies for it

Our industry does not respect tradition - it only respects innovation.

Habit creates the appearance of justice; progress has no greater enemy than habit.

Innovation violates tradition--attacks it in public and steals from it in private.