“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”

Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

No man has received from nature the right to command his fellow human beings.

He whom we call a gentleman is no longer the man of Nature.

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

I feel, I think, I judge; therefore, a part of organized matter like me is capable of feeling, thinking, and judging.

Watch out for the fellow who talks about putting things in order! Putting things in order always means getting other people under your control.

It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.

The best mannered people make the most absurd lovers.

Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man’s afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can’t deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself.

I was attracted to photography because it was technical, full of gadgets, and I was obsessed with science. But at some point around fifteen or sixteen,

An echo is a good way to describe the photogram, which is a visual echo of the real object

The body is to be compared, not to a physical object, but rather to a work of art.

The number and richness of man’s signifiers always surpasses the set of defined objects that could be termed signifieds. The symbolic function must always precede its object and does not encounter reality except when it precedes it into the imaginary.

We must therefore rediscover, after the natural world, the social world, not as an object or sum of objects, but as a permanent field or dimension of existence.

There has to be irony, both in design and in the objects. I see around me a professional disease of taking everything too seriously. One of my secrets is to joke all the time

All the vital mechanisms, varied as they are, have only one object, that of preserving constant the conditions of life in the internal environment.