We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. Slavoj Žižek More Quotes by Slavoj Žižek More Quotes From Slavoj Žižek What if the way we perceive a problem is already part of the problem? Slavoj Žižek what-if problem way Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism. Slavoj Žižek hands years thinking The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. Slavoj Žižek pseudo goes-on today If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them. Slavoj Žižek if-you-love-someone ifs reason Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures. Slavoj Žižek small-pleasures ruins emergencies 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 Žižek masturbation love-is sex Words are never 'only words'; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do. Slavoj Žižek matter can-do I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating. Slavoj Žižek trash eating names Often, the worst way to become prisoner of a system is to have a dream that things may turn better, there is always the possibility of change. Because it is precisely this secret dream that keeps you enslaved to the system. Slavoj Žižek possibility-of-change secret dream Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots. Slavoj Žižek idiot humanity people Atheism is not the denial of the existence of God, but having doubts as to whether God is conscious. Slavoj Žižek denial atheism doubt Why are so many problems today perceived as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality, exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than emancipation, political struggle, or even armed struggle? Slavoj Žižek tolerance political struggle Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions. Slavoj Žižek difficult-questions difficult thinking A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist «chaos» of the painting, asked Picasso: «Did you do this?» Picasso calmly replied: «No, you did this!» Slavoj Žižek guernica paris war I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it. Slavoj Žižek luck goes-on people 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 Žižek consistency reality fiction The problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire. Slavoj Žižek satisfied problem desire Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction. Slavoj Žižek reality fiction The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things -- they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great. Slavoj Žižek horror people thinking 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 Žižek poverty children thinking
