The practice of S/M is the creation of pleasure.... And that's why S/M is really a subculture. It's a process of invention. S/M isthe use of a strategic relationship as a source of pleasure.

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

Politics and the economy are not things that exist, or illusions, or ideologies. They are things that do not exist and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall under a regime of truth dividing the true and the false.

Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.

Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are.

It seems to me that the real political task in a society such as ours is to criticise the workings of institutions, which appear to be both neutral and independent; to criticise and attack them in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.

In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of pirates.