"What characterizes a really great thinker is that they misrecognize the basic dimension of their own breakthrough."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"For Lacan, language is a gift as dangerous to humanity as the horse was to the Trojans: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"The experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie – the truth lies outside, in what we do."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"I do all my work to escape myself. I don't believe in looking into yourself. If you do this, you just discover a lot of shit."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"The only choice is that between direct or indirect relations of domination and exploitation, with any alternative dismissed as utopian."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Words are never 'only words'; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Reality is for those who cannot face their dream."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Every civilisation that disavows its barbarian potential has already capitulated to barbarism."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Populism is ultimately sustained by the frustrated exasperation of ordinary people, by the cry I don't know what's going on, but I've just had enough of it! It cannot go on! It must stop."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"I despise the kind of book which tells you how to live, how to make yourself happy! Philosophers have no good news for you at this level! I believe the first duty of philosophy is making you understand what deep shit you are in."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"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 Zizek
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Writing saved my life. Years ago, because of some private love troubles, I was in a suicidal mood for a couple of weeks. I told myself: “I could kill myself, but I have a text to finish. First I will finish it, then I will kill myself.” Then there was another text, and so on and so on, and here I still am.
― Slavoj Zizek
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"What makes you depressed ? seeing stupid people happy"
― Slavoj Zizek
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"The pressure ‘to do something’ here is like the superstitious compulsion to make some gesture when we are observing a process over which we have no real influence."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"True love is precisely the move of forsaking the promise of Eternity itself for an imperfect individual."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"I’m unable to have one-night stands. In my city, Ljubljana, you can tell exactly which women I’ve slept with, because I married them."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"Love is what makes sex more than masturbation. If there is no love even if you are really with a partner you masturbate with a partner."
― Slavoj Zizek
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Liberals always say about totalitarians that they like humanity, as such, but they have no empathy for concrete people, no? OK, that fits me perfectly.."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Who dares to strike today, when having the security of a permanent job is itself becoming a privilege."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"It is the ultimate irony of history that radical individualism serves as the ideological justification of the unconstrained power of what the large majority of individuals experience as a vast anonymous power.."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"If we only change reality in order to realise our dreams, and do not change these dreams themselves, sooner or later we regress back to the old reality."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Our biological body itself is a form of hardware that needs re-programming through tantra like a new spiritual software which can release or unblock its potential."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"As soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency."
― Slavoj Zizek
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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 Zizek
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"Humanity is OK some great talks, some great arts. Concrete people? No, 99% are boring idiots."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"European civilisation finds it easier to tolerate different ways of life precisely on account of what its critics usually denounce as its weakness and failure.."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"It's not the same thing: coffee without cream or coffee without milk. What you don't get is part of the identity of what you get."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"We live in weird times in which we are compelled to behave as if we are free, so that the unsayable is not our freedom but the very fact of our servitude."
― Slavoj Zizek |
"We don't really want to get what we think that we want. I am married to a wife and relationship with her are cold and I have a mistress. And all the time I dream oh my god if my wife were to disappear.."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"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 Zizek |
"Here is an old phrase I like: 'The only way to the universal good is that we all become strangers to ourselves.'"
― Slavoj Zizek
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"I am a good Hegelian. If you have a good theory, forget about the reality."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"One does not wait for the 'ripe' objective circumstances to make a revolution, circumstances become 'ripe' through the political struggle itself."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"My instinct as a philosopher is that we are effectively approaching a multicentric world, which means we need to ask new, and for the traditional left, unpleasant questions."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard". Okay, then maybe if we had listened to Hitler's story he would not be an enemy? No, there are such things as real enemies and we need to fight them."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"You cannot change people but you can change the system so that people are not pushed into doing evil things."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"The one measure of true love is you can insult the other."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"if you have reasons to love someone you don't love them."
― Slavoj Zizek
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"Cinema is the uitimate prevert art . It doesn't give you what you desire it tells you how to disire"
― Slavoj Zizek
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