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An ideal and flawless freedom, complete freedom, enabling without disabling, is I believe an oxymoron in metaphysics as much as it is an unreachable goal in social life.

Zygmunt Bauman

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Zygmunt Bauman
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 19
Died: 2017
Died: January 9
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
Poznan
Freedom
Oxymoron
Social
Flawless
Without
Enabling
Much
Metaphysics
Believe
Ideal
Life
Complete
Ideals
Disabling
Goal
Unreachable

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A whole world is taken to the grave with the dead person each one of us is unique and unrepeatable.
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There are other ways of finding satisfaction, recipes for human happiness, enjoyment, dignified and meaningful, gratifying life, than increased consumption that increases production.
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In a consumer society, people wallow in things, fascinating, enjoyable things. If you define your value by the things you acquire and surround yourself with, being excluded is humiliating.
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Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.
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While a few poor countries are catching up with the rich world, the differences between the richest and poorest individuals around the globe are huge and likely growing.
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Never paint epic canvases during the revolution, because the revolutionaries will tear them apart.
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Happiness needs one-upmanship.
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After many years of thinking, reading and writing and looking, I came to believe that there are two basic, essential values which are indispensable for humane, decent, dignified life: one is freedom, and the other is security.
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Man is in his short sojourn on earth equal to God in His eternity.
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Where we hope to land (and where we do land, though only for a fleeting moment, enough for tired wings to catch the wind anew) is a 'there' which we thought of little and knew of even less.
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We live in a globalising world. That means that all of us, consciously or not, depend on each other. Whatever we do or refrain from doing affects the lives of people who live in places we'll never visit.
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Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.
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What is assumed to be the materialisation of the inner truth of the self is in fact an idealisation of the material - objectified - traces of consumer choices.
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It is so true that in liquid modernity freedom was, so to speak, let off the leash, and for a quite a number of years the freedom of choice was in principle unlimited. One result was the weakening of inter-human bonds, particularly inherited bonds, and the counterfactual assumption that individuals must and can fend for themselves.
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As to describing me as an outsider throughout, and an outsider through and through - I have no reason to disagree.
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Avoid the crowd, avoid mass audiences, keep your own counsel, which is the counsel of philosophy of wisdom you can acquire and make your own.
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I was leftwing, I am leftwing, and I will die leftwing.
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The Bible provides unity without imposing uniformity, without prohibiting change it is a standing invitation to thinking and to take responsibilities.
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This awful concept of underclass is really horrifying. You're not lower class, you are excluded - outside.
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With my tongue in one cheek only, I'd suggest that were our palaeolithic ancestors to discover the peer-review dredger, we would be still sitting in caves.
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