Quotes by Georges Bataille

About Georges Bataille:

Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille was a French intellectual and literary figure working in literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art. Eroticism, sovereignty, and transgression are at the core of his writings.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Laughing at the universe liberated my life. I escape its weight by laughing. I refuse any intellectual translations of this laughter, since my slavery would commence from that point on.

Georges Bataille

Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us.

Georges Bataille

I remember that one day, when we were in a car tooling along at top speed,we crashed into a cyclist, an apparently very young and very pretty girl. Her head was almost totally ripped off by the wheels. For a long time, we were parked a few yards beyo...

Georges Bataille

...being aware that the sacred quality hidden in the experience of eroticism is something impossible for language to reach (this is also due to the impossibility of experiencing of re-experiencing anything through language), Bataille still expresses ...

Georges Bataille

La poesía, en un primer impulso, destruye los objetos que aprehende, los restituye, mediante esa destrucción, a la inasible fluidez de la existencia del poeta, y a ese precio espera encontrar la identidad del mundo y del hombre. Pero al mismo tiemp...

Georges Bataille

The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.

Georges Bataille

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

Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.

Georges Bataille

I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.

Georges Bataille

Above all human existence requires stability, the permanence of things. The result is an ambivalence with respect to all great and violent expenditure of strength; such an expenditure, whether in nature or in man, represents the strongest possible th...

Georges Bataille

Pleasure only starts once the worm has got into the fruit, to become delightful happiness must be tainted with poison.

Georges Bataille

Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.

Georges Bataille

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

Georges Bataille

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

Georges Bataille

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

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

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

A judgment about life has no meaning except the truth of the one who speaks last, and the mind is at ease only at the moment when everyone is shouting at once and no one can hear a thing.

Georges Bataille

Naturally, love's the most distant possibility.

Georges Bataille

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

Georges Bataille

Author Bio

  • NameGeorges Bataille
  • DescriptionFrench intellectual and literary figure
  • BornSeptember 10, 1897
  • DiedJuly 9, 1962
  • CountryFrance
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Anthropologist; Librarian; Poet; Novelist; Writer