Philosophy Quote by Slavoj Žižek — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“The more we live as 'free individuals' . . . the more we are effectively non-free, caught within the existing frame of possibilities--we have to be impelled or disturbed into freedom. . . . This paradox thoroughly pervades the form of subjectivity that characterizes 'permissive' liberal society. Since permissiveness and free choice are elevated into a supreme value, social control and domination can no longer appear as infringing on subjects' freedom: they have to appear as (and be sustained by) individuals experiencing themselves as free. There is a multitude of forms of this appearing of un-freedom in the guise of its opposite: in being deprived of universal healthcare, we are told that we are being given a new freedom of choice (to choose our healthcare provider); when we can no longer rely on long-term employment and are compelled to search for a new precarious job every couple of years, we are told that we are being given the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and discover our creative potential; when we have to pay for the education of our children, we are told that we are now able to become 'entrepreneurs of the self," acting like a capitalist freely choosing how to invest the resources he possesses (or has borrowed). In education, health, travel . . . we are constantly bombarded by imposed 'free choices'; forced to make decisions for which we are mostly not qualified (or do not possess enough information), we increasingly experience our freedom as a burden that causes unbearable anxiety. Unable to break out of this vicious cycle alone, as isolated individuals--since the more we act freely the more we become enslaved by the system--we need to be 'awakened' from this 'dogmatic slumber' of fake freedom.”

“This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.”

“If I didn't try to assume responsibility for my own existence, it would seem utterly absurd to go on existing.”

“It's a philosophical minefield!”

“There are only two most powerful situations- being so small that you have nothing to lose and being so big that you don't care what you lose!”

“Enuncia algunos textos muy contundentes. Son textos en los cuales la destreza literaria casi infinita que tenía Sartre se pone al servicio de la contundencia conceptual. Y cuando se logra esto a un pensador se lo entiende y se lo recibe en plenitud.”

“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”

“...the only way to judge a philosophy is to examine the lives of those who live it.”