Armaan > Armaan's Quotes

“Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“Alain Badiou was once seated amongst the public in a room where I was delivering a talk, when his cellphone (which, to add insult to injury, was mine -- I had lent it to him) all of a sudden started to ring. Instead of turning it off, he gently interrupted me and asked me if I could talk more softly, so that he could hear his interlocutor more clearly . . . If this was not an act of true friendship, I do not know what friendship is. So, this book is dedicated to Alain Badiou.”
― Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes

“Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism

“Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology… we feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.”
― Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes

“In contrast to the situation in 1945, the world does not need the US; it is the US that needs the rest of the world”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously

“We’re not dreamers. We’re awaking from a dream turning into a nightmare. We’re not destroying anything. We’re watching the system destroy itself.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“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

“There is an old story about a worker suspected of stealing: every evening, as he leaves the factory, the wheelbarrow he rolls in front of him is carefully inspected. The guards can find nothing. It is always empty. Finally, the penny drops: what the worker is stealing are the wheelbarrows themselves...”
― Slavoj Žižek, Violence: Six Sideways Reflections

“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

“There is a contradiction between market liberalism and political liberalism. The market liberals (e.g., social conservatives) of today want family values, less government, and maintain the traditions of society (at least in America's case). However, we must face the cultural contradiction of capitalism: the progress of capitalism, which necessitates a consumer culture, undermines the values which render capitalism possible”
― Slavoj Zizek

“The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: “We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Where did the somewhat awkward “pursuit of happiness” come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property— the latter was replaced by “the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property.”
― Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes

“What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian 'il n'y a pas de rapport ...': if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship between economy and politics, no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint, although—or, rather, because—these two levels are inextricably intertwined.”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View

“One does not wait for the "ripe" objective circumstances to make a revolution, circumstances become "ripe" through the political struggle itself.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times

“There is a wonderful expression in Persian, war nam nihadan, which means "to murder somebody, bury his body, then grow flowers over the body to conceal it”
― Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously