Slavoj Žižek Quotes
Philosopher
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Here is a provocative collection of quotes from Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, renowned for his bold and often controversial insights. Blending psychoanalysis, Marxism, film theory, and pop culture, Žižek challenges readers to confront ideology, power, and the hidden structures shaping everyday life. These quotes capture his sharp intellect, dark humor, and uncompromising approach to philosophy.
I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.
as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
From Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
€7,500, first-class, everything—and all that for 40 minutes selling them some old stuff.
How do we account for this paradox that the absence of Law universalizes prohibition ... The psychoanalytic name for this obscene injunction for this obscene call, ENJOY, is superego. The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.
We don't really want to get what we think that we want.
I am married to a wife and relationship with her are cold and I have a mistress. And all the time I dream oh my god if my wife were to disappear - I'm not a murderer but let us say- that it will open up a new life with the mistress.Then, for some reason, the wife goes away, you lose the mistress.
You thought this is all I want, when you have it there, you turn out it was a much more complex situation.
It was not to live with the mistress, but to keep her as a distance as on object of desire about which you dream.
This is not an excessive example, I claim this is how things function. We don't really want what we think we desire
If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.
It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesfull than ourselves
From Living in the End Times
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
(Žižek, S. "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks." London Review of Books 33.2 (2011): 9-10. )
Words are never ‘only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction.
From Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism
I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.
as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
From Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
€7,500, first-class, everything—and all that for 40 minutes selling them some old stuff.
How do we account for this paradox that the absence of Law universalizes prohibition ... The psychoanalytic name for this obscene injunction for this obscene call, ENJOY, is superego. The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.
We don't really want to get what we think that we want.
I am married to a wife and relationship with her are cold and I have a mistress. And all the time I dream oh my god if my wife were to disappear - I'm not a murderer but let us say- that it will open up a new life with the mistress.Then, for some reason, the wife goes away, you lose the mistress.
You thought this is all I want, when you have it there, you turn out it was a much more complex situation.
It was not to live with the mistress, but to keep her as a distance as on object of desire about which you dream.
This is not an excessive example, I claim this is how things function. We don't really want what we think we desire
If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.
It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesfull than ourselves
From Living in the End Times
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
(Žižek, S. "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks." London Review of Books 33.2 (2011): 9-10. )
Words are never ‘only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction.
From Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism
I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.
as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
From Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
€7,500, first-class, everything—and all that for 40 minutes selling them some old stuff.
How do we account for this paradox that the absence of Law universalizes prohibition ... The psychoanalytic name for this obscene injunction for this obscene call, ENJOY, is superego. The problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and to be able to spontaneously enjoy. The problem is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy.
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
Happiness was never important. The problem is that we don't know what we really want. What makes us happy is not to get what we want. But to dream about it. Happiness is for opportunists. So I think that the only life of deep satisfaction is a life of eternal struggle, especially struggle with oneself. If you want to remain happy, just remain stupid. Authentic masters are never happy; happiness is a category of slaves.
We don't really want to get what we think that we want.
I am married to a wife and relationship with her are cold and I have a mistress. And all the time I dream oh my god if my wife were to disappear - I'm not a murderer but let us say- that it will open up a new life with the mistress.Then, for some reason, the wife goes away, you lose the mistress.
You thought this is all I want, when you have it there, you turn out it was a much more complex situation.
It was not to live with the mistress, but to keep her as a distance as on object of desire about which you dream.
This is not an excessive example, I claim this is how things function. We don't really want what we think we desire
If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.
It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesfull than ourselves
From Living in the End Times
This is the paradox of public space: even if everyone knows an unpleasant fact, saying it in public changes everything. One of the first measures taken by the new Bolshevik government in 1918 was to make public the entire corpus of tsarist secret diplomacy, all the secret agreements, the secret clauses of public agreements etc. There too the target was the entire functioning of the state apparatuses of power.
(Žižek, S. "Good Manners in the Age of WikiLeaks." London Review of Books 33.2 (2011): 9-10. )
Words are never ‘only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
Beyond the fiction of reality, there is the reality of the fiction.
From Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism
