Slavoj Žižek Quotes

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, I think, it’s a basically, I’m not kidding, optimistic film, even as we know at the end the planet Melancholia hits the earth, we all die. But I find something beautifully poetical in the attitude of the main person, Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, no, this inner peace, how she accepts this. I claim that we should not read this as kind of a pessimism. “Oh, we all die. Who cares?” No, if you really want to do something good for society, if you want to avoid all totalitarian threats and so on, you basically should go . . . we should all go to this, let me call it--although I’m a total materialist--fundamentally spiritual experience of accepting that at some day everything will finish, that at any point the end may be near. I think that, quite on the contrary of what may appear, this can be a deep experience which pushes you to strengthen ethical activity. The result of this experience is not, “Oh, the end may be near, so let’s kill, let’s just enjoy,” and so on. No, it’s the opposite. Again, paradoxically, I claim it’s not a superficially but profoundly optimistic film.

The prospect of Neuralink is not to be dismissed as yet another "ontic" scientific research project of no authentic philosophical interest, since it offers something effectively new and unheard-of that challenges our status of being-human: the prospect of the actual (empirical) overcoming of our finitude/sexuality/embeddedness-in-the-symbolic. Entering this other dimension of Singularity becomes a simple positive fact, not a matter of sublime inner experience.""The Fall That Makes Us Like God, Part I

I hate students," [Zizek] said, "they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring.
In a recent interview at this year's Zizek Conference in Ohio, Zizek talked about his personal life before delving into his thoughts on teaching.</br> "I hate giving classes," Zizek said, citing office hours and grading papers as his two biggest peeves.</br> "I did teach a class here [at the University of Cincinnati] and all of the grading was pure bluff," he continues. "I even told students at the New School for example… if you don't give me any of your shitty papers, you get an A. If you give me a paper I may read it and not like it and you can get a lower grade." He received no papers that semester.</br> But it's office hours that are the main reason he does not want to teach. "I can't imagine a worse experience than some idiot comes there and starts to ask you questions, which is still tolerable. The problem is that here in the United States students tend to be so open that sooner or later, if you're kind to them, they even start to ask you personal questions [about] private problems… What should I tell them?" "I don't care," he continued. "Kill yourself. It's not my problem,

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

I may still be a kind of a Marxist but I'm very realistic, I don't have these dreams of revolutions around the corner.

My relationship towards tulips is inherently Lynchian: I think they are disgusting. Just imagine, aren't these some kind of--how do you call it? Vagina dentatas--dental vaginas, threatening to swallow you. I think that- that flowers are something inherently disgusting. I mean, are people aware what a horrible thing these flowers are? I mean, basically, it's an open invitation to all- to all- to- to all the insects and bees, "Come and screw me." You know? I mean, it's-- I think that flowers should be forbidden to children.

I already am eating from the trash can all the time. The name of this trash can is ideology. The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating.

The force of universalism is in you Basques, not in the Spanish state

Love is what makes sex more than masturbation. If there is no love even if you are really with a partner you masturbate with a partner.

See you, either in Hell, or in Communism.

One should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions — but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.” In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.

I claim that jihadis are really motivated neither by religion nor by a Leftist sense of justice, but by resentment, which in no way puts them on the Left, neither “objectively” nor “subjectively.” I simply never wrote that Islamic fundamentalists are in any sense on the Left—the whole point of my writing on this topic is that the “antagonism” between liberal tolerance and ethnic or religious fundamentalism is inherent to the universe of global capitalism: in their very opposition, they are the two faces of the same system. The true Left starts with the insight into this complicity. A good example of how religious fundamentalism is to be located “in the context of the antagonisms of global capitalism” is Afghanistan. Today, when Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 30 years ago, it was a country with strong secular tradition, up to a strong Communist party which first took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Afghanistan became fundamentalist when it was drawn into global politics (first through the Soviet intervention).

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.

Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

They are trying as directly as possible to sell you experiences, i.e. what you are able to do with the car, not the car as a product itself. An extreme example of this is this existing economic marketing concept, which basically evaluates the value of you as a potential consumer of your own life. Like how much are you worth, in the sense of all you will spend to buy back your own life as a certain quality life. You will spend so much in doctors, so much in beauty, so much in transcendental meditation, so much for music, and so on. What you are buying is a certain image and practice of your life. So what is your market potential, as a buyer of your own life in this sense?