Mohammed Shahil > Mohammed's Quotes

“True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm, and intelligence”
― Zizek Slavoj

“When we are shown scenes of starving children in Africa, with a call for us to do something to help them, the underlying ideological message is something like: "Don't think, don't politicize, forget about the true causes of their poverty, just act, contribute money, so that you will not have to think!”
― Slavoj Zizek

“I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure ... Like, why did Paris Commune go wrong? Trotskyites. Why did the October Revolution go wrong? And so on ... OK, we screwed it up, but we can give the best theory why it had to happen.”
― Slavoj Zizek

“There is an old joke about socialism as the synthesis of the highest achievements of the whole human history to date: from prehistoric societies it took primitivism; from the Ancient world it took slavery; from medieval society brutal domination; from capitalism exploitation; and from socialism the name..”
― Slavoj Žižek, Revolution at the Gates: Zizek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings

“On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: "Dear guest!
To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is
totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200:' The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay . . . The superego imperative to enjoy thus functions as the reversal of Kant's "Du kannst, denn du soUstf" (You can, because you must ! ) ; it relies on a "You must, because you can ! " That is to say, the superego aspect of today's "nonrepressive" hedonism (the constant provocation we are exposed to, enjoining us to go right to the end and explore all modes of jouissance) resides in the way permitted jouissance necessarily turns into obligatory jouissance.”
― Slavoj Zizek

“And so on, and so on...”
― Slavoj Žižek

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen

“Not to be born at all
Is best, far best that can befall,
Next best, when born, with least delay
To trace the backward way.
For when youth passes with its giddy train,
Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils,
Pain, pain forever pain;
And none escapes life's coils.
Envy, sedition, strife,
Carnage and war, make up the tale of life.”
― Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus

“ആ പൂവ് നീയെന്തു ചെയ്തു?..........?
ഏതുപൂവ് ?..
രക്ത നക്ഷത്രം പോലെ
കടും ചെമാപ്പായ ആ പൂവ് ?
ഓ അതോ ?
അതെ, അതെന്ത് ചെയ്തു..?
തിടുക്കപ്പെട്ടു അന്വേഷിക്കുന്നതെന്തിനു ?
ചവിട്ടി അരച്ചുകളഞ്ഞോ എന്നറിയാന്‍?
കളഞ്ഞെങ്കിലെന്ത്?
ഓ ഒന്നുമില്ല,

എന്റെ ഹൃദയമായിരുന്നു അത്.....!”
― Vaikom Muhammad Basheer

“How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as a secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.”
― Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

“If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude.”
― Stokely Carmichael