Quotes
Quotes _________________________________________________________
"In sexuality, as in art, the idea of progress is absurd. However, obscenity and transparency progress ineluctably, because they are no longer partake in the order of desire but in the order of the frenzy of the image...The obscenity of our culture resides in the confusion of desire and its equivalent materialized in the image; not only for sexual desire, but in the desire for knowledge and its equivalent materialized in 'information,' the desire for fantasy and its equivalent materialized in the Disneylands of the world, the desire for space and its equivalent programmed into vacation itineraries, the desire for play and its equivalent programmed into private telematics. It is this promiscuity and the ubiquity of images, this viral contamination of things by images, which are the fatal characteristics of our culture." -J. Baudrillard “When someone is seeking...it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with this goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.” -Herman Hesse "As s civilized UNESCO experiment, running water—with its lineal organization of pipes—was installed recently in some Indian villages. Soon the villagers requested that the pipes be removed, for it seemed to them that the whole social life of the village had been impoverished when it was no longer necessary for all to visit the communal well. To us the pipe is a convenience. We do not think of it as culture or as a product of literacy, any more then we think of literacy as challenging our habits, our emotions, or our perceptions. To non-literate people, it is perfectly obvious that the most commonplace conveniences represent total change in culture." -Marshall McLuhan "…in a visual and highly literate culture, when we meet a person for the first time his visual appearance dims out the sound of the name, so that in self-defense we add: “How do you spell your name?” -Marshall McLuhan “Today…modern art is beginning to lose its powers of negation. For some years now its rejections have been ritual repetitions: rebellion has turned into Procedure, criticism into rhetoric, transgression into ceremony. Negation is no longer creative… we are living the end of the idea of modern art. “ “Things have no origin any longer and no end, they cannot develop logically or dialectically any more, but only chaotically or randomly. They are becoming extreme in the literal sense – exterminis: they are beyond the limits.” -J. Baudrillard. “Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of something it must be profound.” -F. Nietzsche “Thus I want man and woman: the one fit for war, the other fit to give birth, but both fit to dance with head and limbs. And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh. “-F. Nietzsche “Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows his nature. What can repression accomplish? “ -Bhagavad-gita “You know when you’re driving at night like this it can suddenly occur to you that maybe you’re going in completely the wrong direction. That turn you took back there…you were really tired and it was dark and raining and you took the turn and you just started going that way and then the rain stops and it starts to get light and you look around and absolutely everything is completely unfamiliar. You know you’ve never been here before and you pull into the next station and you feel so awkward saying, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where I am?’…” –Laurie Anderson “...empty functionalism is well summed up by the word 'gizmo'. A gizmo does have an operational value, but whereas the function of a machine is explicit in its name, a gizmo, in the context of the functional paradigm, is always an indeterminate term with...the pejorative connotation of 'the thing without a name' or 'the thing I cannot name'...as an object detached from its function, what the 'gizmo' or the 'thingummyjig' suggest is a vague and limitless functionality-or...the mental picture of an imaginary functionality...it is unquestionably human irrationality and its figments which fuel the tendency for any machine to take on gizmo-like prosperities...The true functionality of the gizmo is unconscious in character-hence its fascination for us...There is a direct link between the paradigm of technical action executed by the world and the paradigm of sexual action executed by the subject; and in this perspective the gizmo, the ultimate tool, is basically a substitute for the phallus, the operative medium of function par excellence. Moreover, any object has something of the gizmo about it, for in proportion as its practical instrumentality fades it becomes susceptible of cathexis by a libidinal instrumentality.” -J.Baudrillard "After three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding. During the mechanical ages we had extended out bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man—the technological simulation of consciousness. When the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our sense and our nerves by the various media. Whether the extension of consciousness, so long sought by advertisers for specific products, will be a “good thing” is a question that admits of a wide solution. There is little possibility of answering such questions about the extensions of man without considering all of them together. Any extension whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex." -Marshall McLuhan “That way is my will; I trust “Far from the marketplace and far from fame happens all that is great: far from the marketplace and far from fame the inventors of new values have always dwelt.” -F. Nietzsche "Thus, it is no shock of civilizations, of religions, and it goes much beyond
Islam and America, on which one attempts to focus the conflict to give
the illusion of a visible conflict and of an attainable solution (through force). It certainly is a fundamental antagonism, but one which shows, through the spectrum of America (which maybe by itself the epicentre but not the embodiment of globalization) and through the spectrum
of Islam (which is conversely not the embodiment of terrorism),
triumphant globalization fighting with itself. In this way it is indeed
a World War, not the third one, but the fourth and only truly World
War, as it has as stakes globalization itself. The first two World Wars
were classic wars. The first ended European supremacy and the colonial
era. The second ended Nazism. The third, which did happen, as a
dissuasive Cold War, ended communism. From one war to the other, one
went further each time toward a unique world order. Today the latter,
virtually “Not every end is the goal. The
end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not
reached its end, it also hasn’t reached its goal.” -F. Nietzsche “…we are only episodic conductors of meaning, for in the main, and profoundly, we form a mass, living most of the time in panic or haphazardly, above and beyond any meaning.”- J. Baudrillard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "There is no such thing, at this ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "If exposed long enough to the tomtoms and the singing, every one of our philosophers would end by ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The American people will never ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "...New development in the field --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “When your strategy is deep and far-reaching, then what you gain by your calculations is much, so you can win before you even fight. When your strategic thinking is shallow and near- sighted, then what you gain by your calculations is little, so you lose before you do battle. Therefore it is said that victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” -Sun Tzu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin …. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again …. Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in …. But if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit." -Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the Bank of England ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "you got a fast car -- Traci Chapman, Fast Car - Shadows On A Lonesome Road ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Who is the third who walks always beside you? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “That the silent majority is an imaginary referent does not mean they don’t exist. It means that their representation is no longer possible. The masses are no longer a referent because they no longer belong to the order of representation. They don’t express themselves, they are surveyed. They don’t reflect upon themselves, they are tested.”- J. Baudrillard “It
would not be too far-fetched to say that the extermination of mankind
begins with the extermination of germs. Man, with his humors, his
passions, his laugh, his genitalia, his secretions, is nothing more
than a filthy little germ disturbing the universe of transparency. Once
everything will have been cleansed, once an end will have been put to
all viral processes and to all social and bacillary contamination, than
only the virus of sadness will remain, in this universe of deadly
cleanliness and -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the bridge I stood "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -Thomas Jefferson ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “Rather know nothing than half-know much! Rather be a fool on one's own than a sage according to the opinions of others!” -F. Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- “A good society is a means
to a good life for those who compose it; not something having a kind of
excellence on its own account.” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where Will Our Children Live... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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