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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

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

More quotes by Raoul Vaneigem

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The work of art of the future will be the construction of a passionate life.
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To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.
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As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.
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Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.
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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.
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I do not dream of a gentle revolution. My passion runs to the violence of supersession, the ferocity of a life that renounces nothing.
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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.
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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.
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Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?
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Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume the hellish cycle is complete.
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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.
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To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection
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In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the
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Work is the opposite of creativity.
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Hope is the leash of submission.
Raoul Vaneigem
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What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?
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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.
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Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.
Raoul Vaneigem
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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
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Daydreaming subverts the world.
Raoul Vaneigem