Purchasing power is a license to purchase power. The old proletariat sold its labour power in order to subsist; what little leisure time it had was passed pleasantly enough in conversations, arguments, drinking, making love, wandering, celebrating and rioting. The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he’s not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he’s being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy. The ideology of consumption becomes the consumption of ideology.

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

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.

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

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

Suffering is the pain of constraints. An atom of pure delight, no matter how small, can hold it at bay.

To work for delight and authentic festivity is barely distinguishable from preparing for a general insurrection