Quote

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

Raoul Vaneigem

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Raoul Vaneigem
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: March 21
Journalist
Philosopher
Writer
World
Upside
Commodity
Transformation
Bases
Upon
Work
Life

More quotes by Raoul Vaneigem

Image
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.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them for an appearance that reifies them for roles that wrest them from authentic life for a time whose passage defines and confines them.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
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.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, to leisure, to all that destroys imagination. This means that people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure, but of the use to which they are.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Hope is the leash of submission.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
I do not dream of a gentle revolution. My passion runs to the violence of supersession, the ferocity of a life that renounces nothing.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Work is the opposite of creativity.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Daydreaming subverts the world.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
The history of our times calls to mind those Walt Disney characters who rush madly over the edge of a cliff without seeing it, so that the power of their imagination keeps them suspended in mid-air but as soon as they look down and see where they are, they fall.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume the hellish cycle is complete.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams.
Raoul Vaneigem
Image
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
Raoul Vaneigem