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

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

Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume; the hellish cycle is complete.

The eruption of lived pleasure is such that in losing myself I find myself; forgetting that I exist, I realize myself.

What could I wish for the present but to take the greatest pleasure in being what I am?

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.

Our task is not to rediscover nature but to remake it.