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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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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
Moments
Servility
Others
Wherein
Another
Base
Way
Relation
Think
Follow
Thinking
Meaning
Life
Knowledge
Acceptation
Moment
Enslaves

More quotes by 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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It seems impossible, in fact, to judge the eye using any word other than seductive, since nothing is more attractive in the bodies of animals and men. But extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.
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The great monuments are raised up like dams, pitting the logic of majesty and authority against all the shady elements: it is in the form of cathedrals and palaces that Church and State speak and impose silence on the multitudes.
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 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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How cruel my suffering is,—no one is more talkative than I am!
Georges Bataille
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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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In what will survive me I am in harmony with my annihilation.
Georges Bataille
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Existence as entirety remains beyond any one meaning and it is the conscious presence of humanness in the world inasmuch as this is nonmeaning, having nothing to do other than be what it is, no longer able to go beyond itself or give itself some kind of meaning through action.
Georges Bataille
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Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.
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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Life has always taken place in a tumult without apparent cohesion, but it only finds its grandeur and its reality in ecstasy and in ecstatic love.
Georges Bataille
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Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse, for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.
Georges Bataille
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I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?
Georges Bataille
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Entirety exists within me as exuberance in empty longing in the desire to burn with desire.
Georges Bataille
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Nothing radically changes when instead of human satisfaction, we think of the satisfaction of some heavenly being! God's person displaces the problem and does not abolish it.
Georges Bataille
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To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
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
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A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.
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