A German officer visited Picasso in his Paris studio during the Second World War. There he saw Guernica and, shocked at the modernist «chaos» of the painting, asked Picasso: «Did you do this?» Picasso calmly replied: «No, you did this!»
Slavoj ŽižekWe should not oppose something just because it was appropriated by the wrong guys; rather, we should think about how to reappropriate it.
Slavoj ŽižekYou can be an extreme materialist, thinking that economic development ultimately determines everything; then you are truly ideological.
Slavoj ŽižekThe problem for us is not are our desires satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.
Slavoj ŽižekFor me, Stalinism was even a greater philosophical problem than Nazism. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. There is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors.
Slavoj Žižek