“Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“... just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The status of celebrity offers the promise of being showered with ‘all good things’ that capitalism has to offer. The grotesque display of celebrity lives (and deaths) is the contemporary form of the cult of personality; those ‘famous for being famous’ hold out the spectacular promise of the complete erosion of a autonomously lived life in return for an apotheosis as an image. The ideological function of celebrity (and lottery systems) is clear - like a modern ‘wheel of fortune’ the message is ‘all is luck; some are rich, some are poor, that is the way the world is...it could be you!”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Spectacle is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender “lonely crowds.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“This society eliminates geographical distance only to produce a new internal separation.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality. The commodity form reduces everything to quantitative equivalence. The quantitative is what it develops, and it can develop only within the quantitative.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. It is modest only on this one point, however, because this officially nonexistent bureaucracy simultaneously attributes the crowning achievements of history to its own infallible leadership. Though its existence is everywhere in evidence, the bureaucracy must be invisible as a class. As a result, all social life becomes insane.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The society whose modernisation has reached the stage of integrated spectacle
is characterised by the combined effect of five principal factors: incessant technological renewal, integration of state and economy, generalised secrecy, unanswerable lies, and eternal present . . .
— The Society of the Spectacle”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“La réalité du temps a été remplacée par la publicité du temps.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Capital is no longer the invisible center governing the production process; as it accumulates, it spreads to the ends of the earth in the form of tangible objects. The entire expanse of society is its portrait.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Le tourisme, se ramène fondamentalement au loisir d'aller voir ce qui est devenu banal.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Separation is itself an integral part of the unity of this world, of a global social practice split into reality and image. The social practice confronted by an autonomous spectacle is at the same time the real totality which contains that spectacle. But the split within this totality mutilates it to the point that the spectacle seems to be its goal.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The spectacle is a social relation between people that is mediated by an accumulation of images that serve to alienate us from a genuinely lived life. The image is thus an historical mutation of the form of commodity fetishism.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Every given commodity fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the others, and attempts to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one. The spectacle, then is the epic poem of this struggle, an epic which cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sign the praises of men and their weapons, but of commodities and their passions. In this blind struggle every commodity, pursuing its passion, unconsciously realizes something higher: the becoming-world of the commodity, which is also the becoming-commodity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse of commodity logic, what's specific in the commodity wears itself out in the fight while the commodity-form moves toward its absolute realization.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The spectacle is nothing more than the common language of this separation. What binds the spectators together is no more than an irreversible relation at the very center which maintains their isolation. The spectacle reunites the separate, but reunites it as separate.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having — human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing — all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“As long as necessity is socially dreamed, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“But a lie that can no longer be challenged becomes insane.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. The commodity’s independence has spread to the entire economy it now dominates. This economy has transformed the world, but it has merely transformed it into a world dominated by the economy.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Whereas during the primitive stage of capitalist accumulation “political economy considers the proletarian only as a worker,” who only needs to be allotted the indispensable minimum for maintaining his labor power, and never considers him “in his leisure and humanity,” this ruling-class perspective is revised as soon as commodity abundance reaches a level that requires an additional collaboration from him. Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
“Partout où il y a représentation indépendante, le spectacle se reconstitue.”
― Guy Debord, quote from The Society of the Spectacle
Guy Debord
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date December 28, 1931
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“children could be taught to hear and feel music in their minds rather than just with their ears; how to make them feel music as a thing of movement rather than a dull, lifeless subject; how to awaken a child’s sensitivity.”
― Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, quote from Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window
“A cat’s body can sustain a lot of damage without actually dying,” Lucas said, his voice as deep as the rumble of the earth itself. “You just think about that before you so much as scratch yourself without permission.” Ryan gulped and nodded, still mute.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from Stray
“Surveyor, in your thoughts you may be reproaching Sordini for not having been prompted by my claim to make inquiries about the matter in other departments. But that would have been wrong, and I want this man cleared of all blame in your thoughts. One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.”
“Chairman, allow me to interrupt you with a question,” said K., “didn’t you mention a control agency? As you describe it, the organization is such that the very thought that the control agency might fail to materialize is enough to make one ill.”
“You’re very severe,” said the chairman, “but multiply your severity by a thousand and it will still be as nothing compared with the severity that the authorities show toward themselves. Only a total stranger could ask such a question. Are there control agencies? There are only control agencies. Of course they aren’t meant to find errors, in the vulgar sense of that term, since no errors occur, and even if an error does occur, as in your case, who can finally say that it is an error.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Castle
“...for the last twelve months I've been more single than a one-dollar bill."~Sammy”
― Zack Love, quote from Sex in the Title: A Comedy about Dating, Sex, and Romance in NYC (Back When Phones Weren't So Smart)
“burn it.’ Jude felt, for an instant, an almost overpowering impulse to do just that, find some lighter fluid, douse it, cook it in the driveway. It was an impulse he immediately mistrusted, wary of any irrevocable action. Who knew what bridges might be burned along with it? He felt the slightest flicker of an idea, something about the awful-smelling suit and how it might be of use, but the thought drifted away before he could fix on it. He was tired. It was hard to pin a solid thought in place. His reasons for wanting to hold on to the suit were illogical, superstitious, unclear even to himself, but when he spoke, he had a perfectly reasonable explanation for keeping it. ‘We can’t burn it. It’s evidence. My lawyer is going to want it later, if we decide to build a case against her.’ Georgia laughed, weakly, unhappily. ‘What? Assault with a deadly spirit?”
― Joe Hill, quote from Heart-Shaped Box
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