“In the same way that we need statesmen to spare us the abjection of exercising power, we need scholars to spare us the abjection of learning.”

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today.

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.

Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.

Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.

You are born modern, you do not become so.

I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again.

It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia.

The world is not dialectical – it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

The order of the world is always right – such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.

The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction.

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.

Perhaps the world’s second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.

Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex and it commands the higher price.

There exists, between people in love, a kind of capital held by each.

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today.