Quote

[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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Matter
Philosophy
Amounts
Take
Saying
Spit
Frock
Giving
Hand
Coats
Formless
Something
Goal
Academic
Resembles
Would
Happy
Mathematical
Affirming
Men
Universe
Shape
Spider
Like
Hands
Shapes
Coat
Nothing
Amount
Spiders

More quotes by Georges Bataille

Image
The warrior's nobility is like a prostitute's smile, the truth of which is self-interest.
Georges Bataille
Image
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
Image
Eroticism cannot be entirely revealed without poetry.
Georges Bataille
Image
The sovereign being is burdened with a servitude that crushes him, and the condition of free men is deliberate servility.
Georges Bataille
Image
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
Image
I remain in intolerable non-knowledge, which has no other way out than ecstasy itself.
Georges Bataille
Image
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
Image
I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.
Georges Bataille
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The circumstances of my life are paralyzing.
Georges Bataille
Image
Eroticism, it may be said, is assenting to life up to the point of death
Georges Bataille
Image
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
Image
Humanity-attached-to-the-task-of-changing-the-world, which is only a single and fragmentary aspect of humanity, will itself be changed in humanity-as-entirety.
Georges Bataille
Image
Entirety exists within me as exuberance in empty longing in the desire to burn with desire.
Georges Bataille
Image
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
Image
The need to go astray, to be destroyed, is an extremely private, distant, passionate, turbulent truth.
Georges Bataille
Image
It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
Georges Bataille
Image
[Nietzsche's doctrine of the eternal return] is what makes moments caught up in the immanence of return suddenly appear as ends. In every other system, don't forget, these moments are viewed as means: Every moral system proclaims that each moment of life ought to be motivated. Return unmotivates the moment and frees life of ends.
Georges Bataille
Image
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