Jake > Jake's Quotes

“The power of impulses which haunt our phantasies, of imaginary modes of being which ignite the poetic word, and of the all-embracing, that most powerful something which menaces us so long as we feel unloved, in all these registers and perhaps in others as well, the dialectic of power and form takes place, which insures that language only captures the foam on the surface of life.”
― Paul Ricœur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning

“As a means of alleviating poverty, Christian charity was worse than useless, as could be seen in the Papal states, which abounded in it. But it was popular not only among the traditionalist rich, who cherished it as a safeguard against the evil of equal rights... but also among the traditionalist poor, who were profoundly convinced that they had a right to crumbs from the rich man's table.”
― Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848

“Hinduism” is more appropriately thought of as a family name that encompasses an astounding variety of theological doctrines and practice.”
― Anantanand Rambachan, A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two Is Not One

“There is unique gravity to an actual prison sentence, the violence of locking a human being in a cage. Yet the system is broader than the buildings called "prisons." Manipulation, confinement, punishment, and deprivation can take other forms - forms that may be less easily recognized as the violence they are.”
― Maya Schenwar, Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms

“In a sense the dramatic dialogue is both the fullest symbol and the final justification of the city's life. For the same reason, the most revealing symbol of the city's failure, of its very non-existence as a social personality, is the absence of dialogue-not necessarily a silence, but equally the loud sound of a chorus uttering the same words in cowed if complacent conformity. The silence of a dead city has more dignity than the vocalisms of a community that knows neither detachment nor dialectic opposition, neither ironic comment nor stimulating disparity, neither an intelligent conflict nor an active moral resolution. Such a drama is bound to have a fatal last act.”
― Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects

“The knowledge the patient seeks is already known to him/her: it exists in his/her unconscious, in the signifying chain containing the master signifiers. This is the ‘knowledge’ that slips out in dreams, slips of the tongue, self-defeating acts – and, of course, the symptoms that might have prompted the Subject to come to the couch in the first place.”
― Lionel Bailly, Lacan: A Beginner's Guide

“The Other – the set of rules and hypotheses into which the individual is born and which includes and is contained within language – creates the Subject and its ego; as language, it is the raw material from which the signifying chain was produced; its first embodiment – the mother – is the object of primary identification of the child.”
― Lionel Bailly, Lacan: A Beginner's Guide

“In Lacanian analysis, interpretation is used sparingly, and not in reference to the analyst’s theoretical constructs,”
― Lionel Bailly, Lacan: A Beginner's Guide

“The various manifestations of socialism destroyed both their peoples and their ecosystems, whereas the powers of the North and the West have been able to save their peoples and some of their countrysides by destroying the rest of the world and reducing it's people to abject poverty.”
― Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern

“To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.”
― James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Human beings say, "It never rains but it pours." This is not very apt, for it frequently does rain without pouring. The rabbits' proverb is better expressed. They say, "One cloud feels lonely": and indeed it is true that the sky will soon be overcast.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.”
― Erwin Schrödinger

“Not every difference of opinion is a disagreement, and not every disagreement has a resolution. From the fact that we differ, it does not follow that at least one of us is wrong. Nor does it follow that we are both right. Each alternative has to be considered on it's merits. To say that there are several ways of being right is not to say that there is no difference between being right and being wrong.”
― Catherine Z. Elgin, Between the Absolute and the Arbitrary

“All along the line,' said the volunteer, pulling the blanket over him, 'everything in the army stinks of rottenness. Up till now the wide-eyed masses haven't woken up to it. With goggling eyes they let themselves be made into mincemeat and then when they're struck by a bullet they just whisper, "Mummy!" Heroes don't exist, only cattle for the slaughter and the butchers in the general staffs. But in the end every body will mutiny and there will be a fine shambles. Long live the army! Goodnight!”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“God has chosen to give the easy problems to the physicists.”
― Charles A. Lave, An Introduction to Models in the Social Sciences

“Real understanding of any scientific subject must include some knowledge of its historical growth; we cannot comprehend and accept modern concepts and theories without knowing something of their origins - of how we have got where we are. Neglect of this maxim can lead to that unfortunate state of mind which regard the science of the day as finality.”
― Colin Cherry, On Human Communication: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism

“As its lists of diagnoses and ‘diseases’ proliferate, the frantic efforts to distinguish ever-larger numbers of types and sub-types of mental disorder come to seem like an elaborately disguised game of make-believe.”
― Andrew Scull, Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine

“In my opinion the basic cause for the relative failure of the two greatest revolutions in history resides not, to borrow again from Voline, in "historic inevitability," or simply in the subjective "errors" of revolutionary actors. The revolution bears within itself a serious contradiction (a contradiction which fortunately—and we will return to the subject —is not irremediable and is attenuated with time): it can only arise, it can only vanquish if it issues from the depths of the popular masses, from their irresistible spontaneous uprising; but although the class instinct drives the popular masses to break their chains, they are yet lacking in education and consciousness. And since, in their formidable but tumultuous and blind drive towards liberty, they run up against privileged, conscious, educated, organized, and tested social classes, they can only vanquish the resistance they meet if they succeed in obtaining in the heat of the struggle, the consciousness, the science, the organization, and the experience they lack. But the very fact of forging the weapons I have just listed summarily, and which alone can ensure their superiority over the enemy, bears an immense peril within it: that of killing the spontaneity that is the very spirit of the revolution; that of compromising freedom through organization; that of allowing the movement to be confiscated by an elite minority of more educated, more conscious, more experienced militants who, to begin with, offer themselves as guides in order, in the end, to impose themselves as chiefs and to subject the masses to new forms of the oppression of man by man.”
― Daniel Guérin, For a Libertarian Communism

“Through others we become ourselves.”
― Lev S. Vygotsky

“In living organisms, nucleic acid molecules are the only indefinite hereditary replicators, or at least they were until the invention of language and music.”
― John Maynard Smith, The Major Transitions in Evolution

“European humanism usually meant that only Europeans were human.”
― Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract

“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
― Donald T. Campbell

“Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest... The origin of species — Darwin’s problem — remains unsolved.”
― Scott F. Gilbert

“The complaint of the depressive individual, “Nothing is possible,” can only occur in a society that thinks, “Nothing is impossible.” No-longer-being-able-to-be-able leads to destructive self-reproach and auto-aggression. The achievement-subject finds itself fighting with itself. The depressive has been wounded by internalized war. Depression is the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity. It reflects a humanity waging war on itself.”
― Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices First Series

“If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.”
― Gilles Deleuze