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The only loyalty to enlightenment consists in disloyalty. This can be partly understood from the position of its heirs, who look back on the “heroic” times and are necessarily more skeptical of the results. To be an heir always carries a certain “status cynicism” with it, as is well known from stories about the inheritance of family capital.

— Peter Sloterdijk Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)

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More quotes by Peter Sloterdijk

Enlightenment does nothing more than eavesdrop on likely wolves in their dressing rooms, where they put on and take off their sheep’s clothing.

Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)

Every active deed is etched in the matrix of passivity.

Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)

Bourgeois morality tries to maintain an illusion of altruism, whereas in all other areas bourgeois thinking has long since assumed a theoretical as well as an economic egocentrism.

Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)

Our lethargic modernity certainly knows how to “think historically,” but it has long doubted that it lives in a meaningful history.

Critique of Cynical Reason (1987)

Psychologically speaking, enlightenment always meant an advance in the training of mistrust — in the construction of an ego concerned about self-assertion and control of reality.

Critique of Cynical Reason (1983)

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