André Gorz > Quotes

“You're 82 years old. You've shrunk six centimetres, you only weigh 45 kilos yet you're still beautiful, graceful and desirable. We've lived together now for 58 years and I love you more than ever. I once more feel a gnawing emptiness in the hollow of my chest that is only filled when your body is pressed next to mine.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“With you I understood that pleasure is not something you give or take. It's a way of giving yourself and calling forth the gift of self from another person.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“What captivated me about you was that you opened the door to another world for me. The values that dominated my childhood had no place there. That world enchanted me. I could leave the real world behind and be someone else, without any ties or obligations. With you, I was elsewhere, in a foreign place, foreign to myself. You gave me access to another dimension when I'd always rejected any fixed identity and just worn different identities on top of each other, though none of them were mine.

By speaking to you in English, I made your language mine. I've continued to talk to you in English right up to this day, even when you answered me in French. For me, English, which I knew mainly through you and through books, was from the start like a private language that preserved our intimacy against the intrusion of the real world, and its prevailing social normals. I felt like I was building a protected and protective world with you.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“I'd reached the age where you ask yourself what you've done with your life, what you would have liked to have done with it. I had the impression of not having lived my life, of having always observed it at a distance, of having developed only one side of myself and being poor as a person. You were, and always had been, richer than I was. You'd blossomed and grown in every dimension. You were at one with your life; whereas I'd always been in a hurry to move on to the next task, as though our life would only really begin later.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“At night I sometimes see the figure of a man, on an empty road in a deserted landscape, walking behind a hearse. I am that man. It's you the hearse is taking away. I don't want to be there for your cremation; I don't want to be given an urn with your ashes in it. I hear the voice of Kathleen Ferrier singing, 'Die Welt ist leer, Ich will nicht leben mehr'* and I wake up. I check your breathing, my hand brushed over you. Neither of us wants to outlive the other. We've often said to ourselves that if, by some miracle, we were to have a second life, we'd like to spend it together."

*The world is empty. I don't want to go on living.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“You had no place of your own in the world of adults. It was sink or swim for you - you couldn't help but be strong because your whole world was precarious. I've always felt your underlying fragility. I loved your fragility when you weren't afraid to let it show.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“If, as is the tendency today, the governing class defines job-creation as its main aim, where will this transformation of all activities into paid activities (with remuneration as their sole rationale and maximum productivity as their goal) finally end? How long will the extremely fragile barriers which still prevent the professionalization of motherhood and fatherhood be able to hold out? When shall we see the commercial procreation of embryos, the sale of children, or a trade in organs? Are we not already monetizing, professionalizing and selling not only those things and services we produce, but also what we are and what we cannot produce at will or detach from ourselves? In other words, are we not already transforming ourselves into commodities and treating life as one means among others rather than the supreme end which all means must subserve?”
― André Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology

“Socialism' should not be taken to mean merely subordinating the economy to the needs and values of society. It also involves the creation, as an effect of ever shorter and increasingly flexible working hours, of a growing sphere of sharing within the community, of voluntary and self-organized co-operation, of increasingly extensive self-determined activities.”
― André Gorz, Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology

“Dicevo pure: "Che cosa ci prova che tra dieci o vent'anni il nostro patto per la vita corrisponderà al desiderio di ciò che saremo diventati?".
La tua risposta non si poteva parare: "Se ti unisci con qualcuno per la vita, mettete le vostre vite in comune e tralasciate di fare ciò che divide o contrasta la vostra unione. La costruzione della vostra coppia è il vostro progetto comune, non avrete mai finito di rafforzarla, di adattarla, di riorientarla in funzione delle situazioni mutevoli. Noi saremo ciò che faremo insieme".”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“love is the mutual fascination of two individuals based precisely on what is least definable about them, least-socialisable, most resistant to the roles and images of themselves that society imposes on them.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“J'ai compris avec toi que le plaisir n'est pas quelque chose qu'on prend ou qu'on donne. Il est manière de se donner et d'appeler le don de soi de l'autre.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Die institutionellen Entscheidungsträger, die diese Politiken ins Werk setzen können, sind jedoch nicht die Akteure jener anderen Gesellschaft, die heraufkommen muß. Man darf von der Politik nur erwarten, daß sie die Freiräume schafft, in denen sich die alternativen sozialen Praktiken entwickeln können.”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi

“Nous aimerions chacun ne pas avoir à survivre à la mort de l'autre. Nous nous sommes souvent dit que si, par impossible, nous avions une seconde vie, nous voudrions la passer ensemble.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Sen doktrin, teori, düşünce sistemleri denen psişik protezler olmadan gelişmeni sürdürmekteydin. Benimse entelektüel dünyada yerimi almak için, tartışmaya açmak zorunda olsam da bu protezlere ihtiyacım vardı.”
― André Gorz

“Le Vieillissement sera mon adieu à l'adolescence, mon renoncement à ce que Deleuze-Guattari appelleront « l'illimitation du désir » et que Georges Bataille appelait « l'omnitude du possible » que l'on n'approche que par le refus indéfini de toute détermination : la volonté de n'être Rien se confond avec celle d'être Tout. À la fin du Vieillissement se trouve cette auto-exhortation : "Il faut accepter d'être fini : d'être ici et nulle part ailleurs, de faire ça et pas autre chose, maintenant et non jamais ou toujours […] d'avoir cette vie seulement.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Zevkin alınan ya da verilen bir şey olmadığını seninle anladım. Kendini verme ve ötekinden kendisini vermesini isteme biçimiydi zevk. Kendimizi tümüyle birbirimize verdik.”
― André Gorz

“Only, this was the thing: you'd provided me with the possibility of getting away from myself and making myself at home in another world. You were like a messenger from that world. With you, I could give my real self a rest. You were part and parcel of that dissolving of reality - myself included - that I'd been working on for seven or eight years through writing. For me, you were the herald out in front who showed me how to put the menacing world on hold. In that world I was a refugee whose existence was not legitimate, whose future never went beyond the three months of a temporary visa. I had no desire to come back to earth. I'd found a refuge in a magical experience and I wasn't about to let it get dragged down into reality. As far back as I can remember, I'd always sought not to exist. You've had to work for years on end to get me to accept the fact that I do exist. And I really don't think your work is over yet.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Es ist unsinnig, eine Arbeit, die zu immer weniger Arbeit und Lohn für alle führt, als wesentliche Quelle von Autonomie, Identität und Entfaltung aller darzustellen.”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi

“Why do I say that I was responsible 'for the turn [your] life would take? That it was up to me 'to make [your] life livable?' In all, eleven lines of poison in three doses, over twenty pages; three tiny strokes that debase you and distort you, written seven years later, that rob us of the meaning of seven years of our life.

Who wrote those eleven lines? I mean: Who was I when I wrote those lines? I feel a painful need to give us back those seven years along with what you truly meant to me.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Je tenais le mariage pour une institution bourgeoise ; considérais qu'il codifiait juridiquement et socialisait une relation qui, pour autant qu'elle était d'amour, liait deux personnes dans ce qu'elles avaient de moins social.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Soll der Kapitalismus nun also trotz allem gerettet werden? Ist das überhaupt möglich? Kann man nichts Besseres tun? Können wir seinen Exodus mit unserem Exodus in nicht von ihm beherrschte Gegenden beantworten?”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi

“Wirtschaftlich gesehen ist es vorteilhafter, das wenige an notwendiger Arbeit auf wenige Leute zu konzentrieren, denen man dann das Gefühl vermittelt, sie seien eine privilegierte Elite, die ihre Privilegien ihrem Eifer verdanken, der sie von den »Verlierern« unterscheidet. Nichts hinderte, technische gesehen, die Firma daran, die Arbeit auf eine viel größere Anzahl von Menschen mit je nur zwanzig Arbeitsstunden zu verteilen. Aber diese Menschen hätten dann nicht mehr die »richtige« Einstellung zur Arbeit: Sie würden sich nicht als als kleine Unternehmer verstehen, die ihr Wissenskapital verwerten.”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi

“Sich der Globalisierung zu widersetzen, sie mit national beschränkten Maßnahmen verhindern zu wollen, bedeutet unweigerlich die Kapitulation vor dieser Globalisierung. Es kann nicht darum gehen, die Globalisierung zu bekämpfen und zu versuchen, sich ihr zu entziehen. Vielmehr gilt es auf globaler Ebene, mit globalen Mitteln für eine andere Globalisierung zu kämpfen. Der Widerstand gegen das transnationale Kapital muß selbst ein transnationaler sein und der gegen die Akteure dieser Globalisierung verlangt vor allem Akteure, die für eine andere Globalisierung streiten, eine Globalisierung, die von einer den ganzen Erdball einbeziehenden Vision und Solidarität und einem weltumspannenden Zivilisationsaufruf getragen wird.”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi

“Von Symptombehandlungen der »Krise« ist nichts zu erwarten, denn es handelt sich um keine Krise mehr. Vielmehr hat sich ein neues System etabliert, und zwar eines, das die »Arbeit« massenweise abschafft. Es zwingt alle, gegen alle um die immer weniger werdende »Arbeit« zu kämpfen, und stellt dadurch die schlimmsten Formen von Herrschaft, Unterwerfung und Ausbeutung wieder her. Aber nicht diese Abschaffung der »Arbeit« dürfen wir diesem neuen System vorwerfen, sondern daß es eben diese »Arbeit«, deren Normen, Würde und allgemeine Zugänglichkeit es abschafft, weiterhin als Pflicht eines jeden, als verbindliche Norm und unersetzliche Grundlage unserer Rechte und unserer Würde postuliert. Deshalb müssen wir den Mut aufbringen, den Exodus aus der »Arbeitsgesellschaft« zu wagen. Sie besteht nicht mehr und kehrt auch nicht wieder zurück.”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi

“J'aimais que tu me réclames tout en me laissant tout le temps dont j'avais besoin.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“L’économie, n’a pas pour tâche de donner du travail, de créer de l’emploi. Sa mission est de mettre en œuvre, aussi efficacement que possible, les facteurs de production, c’est-à-dire de créer le maximum de richesses avec le moins possible de ressources naturelles, de capital et de travail.”
― André Gorz

“J'avais besoin de théorie pour structurer ma pensée et t'objectais qu'une pensée non structurée menace toujours de sombrer dans l'empirisme et l'insignifiance. Tu répondais que la théorie menace toujours de devenir un carcan qui interdit de percevoir la complexité mouvante du réel. (...) Tu n'avais pas eu besoin des sciences cognitives pour savoir que sans intuitions ni affects il n'y a ni intelligence ni sens. Tes jugements revendiquaient imperturbablement le fondement de leur certitude vécue, communicante mais non démontrable. L'autorité - appelons-la éthique - de ces jugements n'a pas besoin du débat pour s'imposer. Tandis que l'autorité du jugement théorique s'effondre s'il ne peut emporter la conviction par le débat.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Vais fazer oitenta e dois anos. Perdeste seis centímetros de altura, só pesas quarenta e cinco quilos e continuas bela, graciosa e apetecível. Vivemos juntos há cinquenta e oito anos e amo-te mais do que nunca. Sinto outra vez no fundo do meu peito um vazio devorador que só o calor do teu corpo contra o meu pode encher.»”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Avec toi je pouvais mettre ma réalité en vacances.”
― André Gorz, Letter to D: A Love Story

“Die Sozialisierung wird solange frustrierte, unangepaßte, verstümmelte und hilflose Individuen hervorbringen, wie sie daran festhält, alles auf »die soziale Integration durch den Arbeitsplatz« zu setzen, alles auf die Integration in eine »Arbeitnehmergesellschaft«, in der alle Tätigkeiten nur als »Mittel, seinen Lebensunterhalt zu verdienen«, geschätzt werden.”
― André Gorz, Arbete mellan misär och utopi