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What characterizes philosophy is this "step back" from actuality into possibility — the attitude best rendered by Adorno's and Horkheimer's motto quoted by Fredric Jameson: "Not Italy itself is given here, but the proof that it exists."

— Slavoj Žižek

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Philosophy

More quotes by Slavoj Žižek

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.

Atheism is not the denial of the existence of God, but having doubts as to whether God is conscious.

As a Marxist, let me add: if anyone tells you Lacan is difficult, this is class propaganda by the enemy.

Last remark in an interview for the CN8 show Nitebeat (2003)

Man as such is nature sick unto death, derailed, run off the rails through a fascination with a lethal Thing.

The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Reading Heidegger against the grain, one discovers a thinker who was, at some points, strangely close to communism.

Less Than Nothing (2012)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Slavoj Žižek (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.