Quotessence
Home / Authors / Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllPhilosophyIfsThinkingRealityWayIdeologyTodayPeopleProblemStates

Famous Slavoj Žižek Quotes

“What is the Absolute? Something that appears to us in fleeting experiences--say, through the gentle smile of a beautiful woman, or even through the warm caring smile of a person who may otherwise seem ugly and rude. In such miraculous but extremely fragile moments, another dimension transpires through our reality. As such, the Absolute is easily corroded;it slips all too easily through our fingers and must be handled as carefully as a butterfly”

MayPersonsMomentsRealitySeemsBeautifulAbsolutesFingersUglyCaringWarmGentleDimensionsFragileSlipsButterflyRudeFleetingMiraculousBeautiful Women
Book:The Fragile Absolute Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?
Create image

“On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: 'Dear guest! To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200.' The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay.”

EnjoyTakenInformationNew YorkDearSmokeGuaranteesHotelGuestsRegulationSheetsGuarantees ThatInfringement
Book:First As Tragedy, Then As Farce
Create image

“Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absence - by naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still present - but above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word 'quarters' the thing, it tears it out of the embedment in its concrete context, it treats its component parts as entities with an autonomous existence: we speak about color, form, shape, etc., as if they possessed self-sufficient being.”

IfsStillsSelfFormSpeakExistenceTearsColorShapesTreatsMurderAbsenceRadicalSufficientEtcQuartersConcretePossessedEntityComponentsAbsentAutonomousSelf SufficientImplyingDissection
Book:Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out
Create image

“Zionism itself has paradoxically come to adopt some antisemitic logic in its hatred of Jews who do not fully identify with the politics of the state of Israel. Their target, the figure of the Jew who doubts the Zionist project, is constructed in the same way as the European antisemites constructed the figures of the Jew – he is dangerous because he lives among us, but is not really one of us.”

WayStatesDoubtDangerousFiguresProjectsHatredLogicJewIsraelTargetZionistZionism
Author:Slavoj Žižek
Create image

“This, then, is the truth of the discourse of universal human rights: the Wall separating those covered by the umbrella of Human Rights and those excluded from its protective cover. Any reference to universal human rights as an 'unfinished project' to be gradually extended to all people is here a vain ideological chimera - and, faced with this prospect, do we, in the West, have any right to condemn the excluded when they use any means, inclusive of terror, to fight their exclusion?”

PeopleHumansMeanUseFightingRightsWallProjectsUniversalWestHuman RightsTerrorVainCoveredDiscourseProtectiveIdeologicalExclusionUnfinishedUmbrellaExcludedSeparatingChimera
Book:Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates
Create image

“The ultimate goal of radical politics is gradually to displace the limit of social exclusions, empowering the excluded agents (sexual and ethnic minorities) by creating marginal spaces in which they can articulate and question their identity. Radical politics thus becomes an endless mocking parody and provocation, a gradual process of reidentification in which there are not final victories and ultimate demarcations”

PoliticsSocialProcessGoalSpaceIdentityVictoryLimitsCreatingUltimateFinalsEndlessAgentsRadicalEmpoweringMinoritiesExclusionParodyExcludedUltimate GoalProvocation
Author:Slavoj Žižek
Create image

“[T]aking the Third into account does not bring us into the position of pragmatic consideration, of comparing different Others; the task is rather to learn to distinguish between false conflicts and the true conflict. For example, today's conflict between Western liberalism and religious fundamentalism is a false one, since it is based on the exclusion of the third term which is its truth: the Leftist emancipatory position.”

DoeDifferentTodayTermReligiousExamplePositionConflictTasksThirdsAccountsWesternCompareLiberalismConsiderationFundamentalismExclusionPragmaticLeftistsReligious Fundamentalism
Author:Slavoj Žižek
Create image

“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”

WantGovernmentTodayAmericaFacesPoliticalValuesCultureSocialCasesProgressCapitalismTraditionConsumersLiberalismContradictionFamily ValuesConsumer Culture
Author:Slavoj Žižek
Create image