Raoul Vaneigem Quotes

Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?

The eruption of lived pleasure is such that in losing myself I find myself; forgetting that I exist, I realize myself.

Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.

Purchasing power is a license to purchase power.

To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.

Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the hellish cycle is complete.

The work of art of the future will be the construction of a passionate life.

Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.

Work is the opposite of creativity.

The world of the commodity is a world upside-down, which bases itself not upon life but upon the transformation of life into work.

Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live.

I do not dream of a gentle revolution. My passion runs to the violence of supersession, the ferocity of a life that renounces nothing.

We can escape the commonplace only by manipulating it, controlling it, thrusting it into our dreams or surrendering it to the free play of our subjectivity.

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.

In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life.

Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.

There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man's life than in all the philosophies.

In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.

As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.

Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.

Daydreaming subverts the world.

We have a world of pleasure to win, and nothing to lose but boredom.

What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?

To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection

People are bewitched into believing that time slips away, and this belief is the basis of time actually slipping away.

Each component of the organism, like the individual in the social body, possesses the capacity for enjoyment of the self through sharing with others.

It is entirely up to us to invent our own lives.

Hope is the leash of submission.

My creativity, no matter how poor, is for me a far better guide than all the knowledge with which my head has been crammed. In the night of Power, its glimmer keeps the enemy forces at bay.

Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom.

To talk of a modern work of art enduring is sillier than talking of the eternal values of Standard Oil.