Who wants a world in which the guarantee that we shall not die of starvation entails the risk of dying of boredom?

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.

The eruption of lived pleasure is such that in losing myself I find myself; forgetting that I exist, I realize myself.

The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.

The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle...

As poverty has been reduced in terms of mere survival, it has become more profound in terms of our way of life.

To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.

To talk of a modern work of art enduring is sillier than talking of the eternal values of Standard Oil.

Purchasing power is a license to purchase power.

What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?

L’unité de l’homme primitif et de la nature est d’essence magique. L’homme ne se sépare vraiment de la nature qu’en la transformant par la technique et, la transformant, il la désacralise. Or l’emploi de la...

In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption.

Ideally a book would have no order in it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom.

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.

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...

It is entirely up to us to invent our own lives.

Everything has been said yet few have taken advantage of it. Since all our knowledge is essentially banal, it can only be of value to minds that are not.

There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man’s life than in all the philosophies.

Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.

Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.

In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity, the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.

Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume: the hellish cycle is complete.

The key is within each of us. No instructions come with it.

Work is the opposite of creativity.