Quotessence
Home / Authors / Eugene Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco

Eugene Ionesco Quotes

Playwright

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldDoeDreamIfsMenWritingChildhoodPeopleRealityMoments

Famous Eugene Ionesco Quotes

“As soon as one knows one is going to die, childhood is over.... So one can be grown up at seven. Then, I believe most human beings forget what they have understood, recover another sort of childhood that can last all their lives. It is not a true childhood but a kind of forgetting. Desires and anxieties are there, preventing you from having access to the essential truth.”

KnowsBelieveHumansKindLastsDesireDiesI BelieveHuman BeingsForgetChildhoodEssentialsAnxietyUnderstoodPhilosophicalSevenAccessPreventing
Author:Eugene Ionesco
Create image

“Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.”

TryingHeartDeathSufferingWishGrowsWaterBornDyingPlantInstinctTiesLong LifeRepressionDeath WishTies That Bind
Author:Eugene Ionesco
Create image

“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a will to renewal. This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of crises - of rupture, repudiation and resistance. When there is no crisis, there is stagnation, petrifaction and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”

BelieveArtMomentsLastsCultureI BelieveArt IsCrisisDecadesResistanceAggressiveRenewalSuccessionStagnationPrerogativeRupture
Author:Eugene Ionesco
Create image

“I have always considered imaginative truth to be more profound, more loaded with significance, than every day reality... Everything we dream about, and by that I mean everything we desire, is true (the myth of Icarus came before aviation, and if Ader or Bleriot started flying it is because all men have dreamed of flight). There is nothing truer than myth... Reality does not have to be: it is simply what is.”

IfsMenMeanDoeDreamRealityDesireProfoundMythFlyingFlightAviationSignificanceImaginativeLoadedIcarus
Author:Eugene Ionesco
Create image

“In the name of religion, one tortures, persecutes, builds pyres. In the guise of ideologies, one massacres, tortures and kills. In the name of justice one punishes...in the name of love of one's country or of one's race hates other countries, despises them, massacres them. In the name of equality and brotherhood there is suppression and torture. There is nothing in common between the means and the end, the means go far beyond the end...ideologies and religion... are the alibis of the means.”

MeanEndsCountryHateNamesJusticeCommonRaceIdeologyTortureBrotherhoodDespiseCynicalOther CountriesSuppressionGuiseMassacresAlibis
Author:Eugene Ionesco
Create image