Where constraint breaks people, and mediation makes fools of them, the seduction of power is what makes them love their oppression. Because of it, people give up their real riches for a cause that mutilates them; for an appearance that reifies them; for roles that wrest them from authentic life; for a time whose passage defines and confines them.

Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams.

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

Each component of the organism, like the individual in the social body, possesses the capacity for enjoyment of the self through sharing with others.

People are bewitched into believing that time slips away, and this belief is the basis of time actually slipping away.

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 in their mouth.

In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life.