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The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility.

Georges Bataille

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Georges Bataille
Age: 64 †
Born: 1897
Born: September 10
Died: 1962
Died: July 9
Author
Drawer
Librarian
Philosopher
Writer
Bilhom
Pierre Angélique
George Bataille
Joruju Bataiyu
G. Bataiyu
Lord Auch
Pierre Angelique
Servility
Conditions
Literature
Crushes
Free
Burdened
Men
Servitude
Deliberate
Sovereign
Crush
Condition

More quotes by Georges Bataille

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Each of us is incomplete compared to someone else - an animal's incomplete compared to a person... and a person compared to God, who is complete only to be imaginary.
Georges Bataille
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In what will survive me I am in harmony with my annihilation.
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We have in fact only two certainties in this world - that we are not everything and that we will die.
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Inner experience ... is not easily accessible and, viewed from the outside by intelligence, it would even be necessary to see in it a sum of distinct operations, some intellectual, others aesthetic, yet others moral. ... It is only from within, lived to the point of terror, that it appears to unify that which discursive thought must separate.
Georges Bataille
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Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit to become delightful, happiness must be tainted with poison.
Georges Bataille
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I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.
Georges Bataille
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Obscenity is our name for the uneasiness which upsets the physical state associated with self-possession, with the possession of a recognized and stable individuality.
Georges Bataille
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In the helter-skelter of this book, I didn't develop my views as theory. In fact, I even believe that efforts of that kind are tainted with ponderousness. Nietzsche wrote with his blood, and criticizing, or, better, experiencing him means pouring out one's lifeblood. It was only with my life that I wrote the Nietzsche book that I had planned.
Georges Bataille
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You perhaps now know that desire reduces us to pulp.
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The circumstances of my life are paralyzing.
Georges Bataille
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A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.
Georges Bataille
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Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.
Georges Bataille
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The chaos of the mind cannot constitute a reply to the providence of the universe. All it can be is an awakening in the night, where all that can be heard is anguished poetry let loose.
Georges Bataille
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[F]or academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.
Georges Bataille
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The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.
Georges Bataille
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I teach the art of turning anguish into delight.
Georges Bataille
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Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.
Georges Bataille
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[Zarathustra] never abandoned the watchword of not having any end, not serving a cause, because, as he knew, causes pluck off the wings we fly with.
Georges Bataille
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The total person is first disclosed ... in areas of life that are lived frivolously.
Georges Bataille
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Life is whole only when it isn't subordinate to a specific object that exceeds it. In this way, the essence of entirety is freedom.
Georges Bataille