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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
Upon
Work
Life
World
Upside
Commodity
Transformation
Bases

More quotes by Raoul Vaneigem

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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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Daydreaming subverts the world.
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Hope is the leash of submission.
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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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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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The work of art of the future will be the construction of a passionate life.
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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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In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real 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.
Raoul Vaneigem
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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.
Raoul Vaneigem
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Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.
Raoul Vaneigem
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To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.
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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Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.
Raoul Vaneigem
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To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection
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Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume the hellish cycle is complete.
Raoul Vaneigem
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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.
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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.
Raoul Vaneigem
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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.
Raoul Vaneigem
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Work is the opposite of creativity.
Raoul Vaneigem