Bataille, Georges

"We educate ourselves into the illusion that understanding is possible."

"Health is the suppression of the body's true desires and contradictions."

"The hope worth having is hope for what we cannot name or control."

"Success is the ultimate failure—the moment we stop reaching toward the impossible."

"We inherit violence from history and call it civilization."

"The solitary act is often more transgressive than the communal rebellion."

"There is no final truth, only the endless interrogation of falsehood."

"We are condemned to freedom, which is why we build so many prisons."

"The philosopher is one who has learned to live comfortably with irresolution."

"We mistake desire for love and call our hunger connection."

"The extreme limits of wisdom and of madness are adjacent."

"I am interested in nothing so much as in the failure of people."

"Man always dies before he is fully born."

"Eroticism is assenting to life even in death."

"The sacred is the deep meaning of things."

"Art is not meant to decorate walls. It is war."

"Nietzsche's mistake was thinking truth was a value."

"I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on."

"The ecstatic moment is when we lose ourselves completely."

"Transgression does not negate the taboo; it presupposes it."

"We are not unified beings but collections of forces."

"The sun is the only thing that gives everything."

"Communication requires a shared madness."

"I want to know what lies beyond the possible."

"Sacrifice is the exultation of the victim."

"Being is not given; it is something we achieve."

"The erotic is a loss of self in the other."

"We must abolish the spirit of seriousness."

"Laughter is the closest humans get to divine rapture."

"The forbidden exists only in the prohibition."