Quote

Often, the worst way to become prisoner of a system is to have a dream that things may turn better, there is always the possibility of change. Because it is precisely this secret dream that keeps you enslaved to the system.

Slavoj Žižek

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Slavoj Žižek
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: March 21
Cultural Critic
Cultural Studies Scholar
Essayist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Politician
Psychoanalyst
Psychologist
Sociologist
Theologian
Ljubljana
Slovenia
Slavoj Zizek
Change
Turn
May
System
Better
Worst
Way
Secret
Enslaved
Always
Turns
Prisoner
Things
Often
Precisely
Dream
Keeps
Become
Possibility

More quotes by Slavoj Žižek

Image
What Americans don't want to admit ... is that not only is there not a contradiction between state regulation and freedom, but in order for us to actually be free in our social interactions, there must be an extremely elaborated network of health, law, institutions, moral rules and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
For the multiculturalist, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are prohibited, Italians and Irish get a little respect, blacks are good, native Americans are even better. The further away we go, the more they deserve respect. This is a kind of inverted, patronising respect that puts everyone at a distance.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
I may still be a kind of a Marxist but I'm very realistic, I don't have these dreams of revolutionists around the corner.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom- war on terror and so on-falsifies freedom.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to be active, to participate, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
It's bad if we are controlled, but if we're not, it can be even worse.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
Thinking begins when you ask really difficult questions.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
My big fear is that if I act the way I am, people will notice that there is nothing to see. So I have to be active all the time, covering up.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The fantasy which serves as a support for the figure of the Stalinist Communist is therefore exactly the same as the fantasy which is at work in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
In Stalinism the tragedy is that its origin is some kind of radical emancipatory project. In the origins you had a kind of workers' uprising the true enigma is how this project of emancipation went so wrong.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesfull than ourselves
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The true ethical test is not only the readiness to save the victims, but also - even more, perhaps - the ruthless dedication to annihilating those who made them victims.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
Words are never 'only words' they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
I agree with Sophocles: the greatest luck is not to have been born - but, as the joke goes on, very few people succeed in it.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
A typical guy who buys organic food doesn't really buy it in order to be healthy he buys it to regain a kind of solidarity as the one who really cares about nature. He buys a certain ideological stance.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The ultimate lesson of The Interpretation of Dreams: reality is for those who cannot sustain the dream.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
The duty of a politician for me is to be a representative: a politician is not an expert, experts are experts, hired for their expertise and so on.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
If you have reasons to love someone, you don’t love them.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
We usually speak of the Jewish-Christian civilization - perhaps, the time has come, especially with regard to the Middle East conflict, to talk about the Jewish-Muslim civilization as an axis opposed to Christianity.
Slavoj Žižek
Image
Without the communist oppression, I am absolutely sure I would now be a local stupid professor of philosophy in Ljubljana.
Slavoj Žižek