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

The millions of human beings who were shot, tortured, starved, treated like animals and made the object of a conspiracy of ridicule, can sleep in peace in their communal graves, for at least the struggle in which they died has enabled their descendants, isolated in their air-conditioned apartments, to believe, on the strength of their daily dose of television, that they are happy and free. The Communards went down, fighting to the last, so that you too could qualify for a Caribbean cruise.

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

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

People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, to leisure, to all that destroys imagination. This means that people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure, but of the use to which they are.

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