Slavoj Žižek Quotes

You cannot change people but you can change the system so that people are not pushed into doing evil things.

The “pursuit of happiness” is such a key element of the “American (ideological) dream” that one tends to forget the contingent origin of this phrase: “We holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Where did the somewhat awkward “pursuit of happiness” come from in this famous opening passage of the US Declaration of Independence? The origin of it is John Locke, who claimed that all men had the natural rights of life, liberty, and property— the latter was replaced by “the pursuit of happiness” during negotiations of the drafting of the Declaration, as a way to negate the black slaves’ right to property.

There is a contradiction between market liberalism and political liberalism. The market liberals (e.g., social conservatives) of today want family values, less government, and maintain the traditions of society (at least in America's case). However, we must face the cultural contradiction of capitalism: the progress of capitalism, which necessitates a consumer culture, undermines the values which render capitalism possible

[O]ne cannot separate violence from the very exist­ ence of the state (as the apparatus of class domination): from the standpoint of the'subordinated and oppressed, the very existence of a state is a fact of violence (in the same sense in which, for example, Robespierre said, in his justification of the regicide, that one does not have to prove that the king committed any specific crimes, since the very existence of the king is a crime, an offence against the freedom of the people). In this strict sense, every violence of the oppressed against the ruling class and its state is ultimately ‘defensive’. If we do not concede this point, we volens nolens ‘normalize’ the state and accept that its violence is merely a matter of contin­ gent excesses (to be dealt with through democratic reforms).

The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, 'Better dead than red!' are now often heard mumbling, 'Better red than eating hamburgers.

Was 9/11 not the 20th congress of the American Dream?

We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.

The only way to survive such shitty times, if you ask me, is to write and read big, fat books, you know? And I’m writing now another book on Hegelian dialectics, subjectivity, ontology, quantum physics and so on. That’s the only way to survive. Like Lenin. I will use his example. You know what Lenin did, in 1915, when World War I exploded? He went to Switzerland and started to read Hegel.