Raoul Vaneigem Quotes

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

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

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

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

Poetry seldom occurs in poems. Poetry only occurs when words cause action.

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

Because of its increasing triviality, everyday life has gradually become our central preoccupation

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

It is much more a lack of fun which batters us than over abundance and indulgence

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

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

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.

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

Work is the opposite of creativity.

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

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

The key is within each of us. No instructions come with it.

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

There is something admirable ... to have to coexist ...
some thousands of souls for whom even the hope of a
last judgment has been taken away.

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

Ideally a book would have no order in it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

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

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

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

Daydreaming subverts the world.

Hope is the leash of submission.

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

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

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.