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David Graeber

David Graeber Quotes

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Famous David Graeber Quotes

“If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.”

IfsWayShowsSeemsLanguageMoralViolenceRelationVictimDebtJustifyBetter WaysReframing
Book:Debt - Updated and Expanded: The First 5,000 Years
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“We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens - like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?”

WayBelieveMeanPhilosophyOrderCommunityDecisionDemocracyClearEqualMembersAncientInventionGreekJointsAthensAthenians
Author:David Graeber
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“We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. It is cosmically unlikely that the developed world will choose to end its orgy of fossil energy consumption, and the Third World its suicidal consumption of landscape. Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

WorldShouldEndsEarthEnergyThirdsClimate ChangeLandscapeGlobal WarmingConsumptionSuicidalFossilsUnlikelyPlagueVirusesHomo SapiensThird WorldEnergy Consumption
Author:David Graeber
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“Traditional hedonism...was based on the direct experience of pleasure: wine, women and song; sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll; or whatever the local variant. The problem, from a capitalist perspective, is that there are inherent limits to all this. People become sated, bored...Modern self-illusory hedonism solves this dilemma because here, what one is really consuming are fantasies and day-dreams about what having a certain product would be like.”

PeopleSelfProblemDreamWould BeCertainSongSexPleasureFantasyModernRocksProductsPerspectiveDrugLimitsDirectWineSolveLocalsTraditionalBoredCapitalistRock N RollInherentConsumingDilemmaIllusoryHedonismSatedSex Drugs
Author:David Graeber
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“Student loans are destroying the imagination of youth. If there’s a way of a society committing mass suicide, what better way than to take all the youngest, most energetic, creative, joyous people in your society and saddle them with, like $50,000 of debt so they have to be slaves? There goes your music. There goes your culture. There goes everything new that would pop out. And in a way, this is what’s happened to our society. We’re a society that has lost any ability to incorporate the interesting, creative and eccentric people.”

PeopleIfsWayCultureLostImaginationAbilityInterestingCreativeHappenedYouthStudentsMassSuicideSlavePopsDebtOur SocietyDestroyingLoanJoyousBetter WaysEccentricEnergeticBe A SlaveSaddlesStudent Loan
Author:David Graeber
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“But in the years since the neoliberal project really has been stripped down to what was always its essence: not an economic project at all, but a political project, designed to devastate the imagination, and willing - with it's cumbersome securitization and insane military projects - to destroy the capitalist order itself if that's what it took to make it seem inevitable.”

IfsYearsHas BeensSeemsPoliticalOrderImaginationEconomicMilitaryWillingProjectsEssenceInsaneInevitableCapitalist
Author:David Graeber
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“We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt.”

StillsSelfJobsGenerationsDebtEnormousLooking ForwardFinishingAssertionNew GenerationUnforgivable
Book:The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
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