Quotes by Raoul Vaneigem

“Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom.”

“The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the st...”

“My creativity, no matter how poor, is for me a far better guide than all the knowledge with which my head has been crammed. In the night of Power, its glimmer keeps the enemy forces at bay.”

“To talk of a modern work of art enduring is sillier than talking of the eternal values of Standard Oil.”

“No more Guernicas, no more Auschwitzes, no more Hiroshimas, no more Setifs. Hooray! But what about the impossibility of living, what about this stifling mediocrity and this absence of passion? What...”

“In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.”

“Purchasing power is a license to purchase power.”

“The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a ...”

“We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.”

“The history of our time calls to mind those cartoon characters who rush madly over the edge of a cliff without seeing it: the power of their imagination keeps them suspended in midair, but as soon ...”

“Enlightenment philosophy accelerated the descent into the concrete, for the concrete was in some ways brought to power along with the revolutionary bourgeois. From the ruins of Heaven, humanity fel...”

“How very lucky the insurgents of Lyons and Fourmies have turned out to be - albeit posthumously! The millions of human beings shot, imprisoned, tortured, starved, brutalized and systematically humi...”