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

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.

The world of the commodity is a world upside-down, which bases itself not upon life but upon the transformation of life into work.

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

In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the

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.

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