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Quote by Slavoj Žižek

“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.”

Quote by Slavoj Žižek

Author

A Slovenian philosopher and an influential figure in contemporary Western philosophy. Born on March 21, 1949, Slavoj Žižek is known for his unique Marxist perspective and profound analysis of culture, politics, and film. more

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“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.”

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Author: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.”

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“Friends told me that the latest trend, at least in Europe, is public sex. They showed me some clips, and they're terrifying. A couple enters a streetcar, half-full, simply takes a seat, undresses, and starts to do it. You can see from surprised faces that it's not staged. It's pure working-class suburb. But what's fascinating is that the people all look, and then they politely ignore it. The message is that even if you're together in public with people, it still counts as private space.”

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Author:Slavoj Žižek

“In order effectively to liberate oneself from the grip of existing social reality, one should first renounce the transgressive fantasmatic supplement that attaches us to it.”

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

Source: The Fragile Absolute Or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?

“The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.”

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Book:Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism

Source: Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism

“What Americans don't want to admit ... is that not only is there not a contradiction between state regulation and freedom, but in order for us to actually be free in our social interactions, there must be an extremely elaborated network of health, law, institutions, moral rules and so on.”

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Author:Slavoj Žižek

“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!”

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Book:Living in the End Times

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“Confucius was not so much a philsopher as a proto-ideologist: what interested him was not metaphysical Truths but rather a harmonious social order within which individuals could lead happy and ethical lives. He was the first to outline clearly what one is tempted to call the elementary scene of ideology, its zero-level, which consists in asserting the (nameless) authority of some substantial Tradition.”

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Author:Slavoj Žižek

“It's bad if we are controlled, but if we're not, it can be even worse.”

Author:Slavoj Žižek

“I planted some jokes in my wedding. Like, the organizers asked me to select music. So when I approached wife at the ceremony, they played the second movement from Shostakovich's 10th Symphony, which is usually known as the "portrait of Stalin." And then when we embraced, the music that they played was Schubert's "Death and the Maiden." I enjoyed this in a childish way! But marriage was all a nightmare and so on and so on.”

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Author:Slavoj Žižek