Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and gives the whole show away. The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.

The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.

The number and richness of man's signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede its object and does not encounter reality except when it precedes it into the imaginary.

We know not through our intellect but through our experience.

It is the mission of the twentieth century to elucidate the irrational.

Speech is not a means in the service of an external end. It contains its own rule of usage, ethics, and view of the world, as a gesture sometimes bears the whole truth about a man.

The perceived world is the always-presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value, and all existence.