Guy Debord

“The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned modern society which ultimately expresses nothing more than its desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep.”

“Dans le monde réellement renversé, le vrai est un moment faux.”

“Con la massa degli oggetti cresce ... il regno degli enti estranei a cui l'uomo è soggiogato". E' lo stadio supremo di un'espansione che ha ritorto il bisogno contro la vita. "Il bisogno di denaro è quindi l'unico bisogno prodotto dall'economia politica, e il solo che esso produca.”

“El espectáculo en general, como inversión concreta de la vida, es el movimiento autónomo de lo no viviente”

“Every given commodity fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the others, and attempts to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one. The spectacle, then is the epic poem of this struggle, an epic which cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sign the praises of men and their weapons, but of commodities and their passions. In this blind struggle every commodity, pursuing its passion, unconsciously realizes something higher: the becoming-world of the commodity, which is also the becoming-commodity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse of commodity logic, what's specific in the commodity wears itself out in the fight while the commodity-form moves toward its absolute realization.”

“I have written less than most writers. But I have drunk far more than most drinkers.”

“Existen distintas clases de libros. Muchos hay que ni siquiera se los abre; y pocos que se copian en los muros.”

“Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.”

“Ma la merce abbondante sta a dire la rottura assoluta di uno sviluppo organico dei bisogni sociali. La sua accumulazione meccanica libera un artificiale illimitato, di fronte al quale il DESIDERIO VIVENTE resta disarmato.”

“None of the activity stolen by work can be regained by submitting to what work has produced. - The Society of The Spectacle”

“Never work.”

“Just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing.”

“The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.”

“The loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality. The commodity form reduces everything to quantitative equivalence. The quantitative is what it develops, and it can develop only within the quantitative.”

“A la moitié du chemin de la vraie vie, nous étions environnés d'une sombre mélancolie, qu'ont exprimée tant de mots railleurs et tristes, dans le café de la jeunesse perdue.”

“The passions have been sufficiently interpreted; the point now is to discover new ones. ”

“Le tourisme, se ramène fondamentalement au loisir d'aller voir ce qui est devenu banal.”

“Les pseudo-événements qui se pressent dans la dramatisation spectaculaire n'ont pas été vécus par ceux qui en sont informés ; et de plus ils se perdent dans l'inflation de leur remplacement précipité, à chaque pulsion de la machinerie spectaulaire. D'autre part, ce qui a été réellement vécu est sans relation avec le temps irréversible officiel de la société, et en opposition directe au rythme pseudo-cyclique du sous-produit consommable de ce temps. Ce vécu individuel de la vie quotidienne séparée reste sans langage, sans concept, sans accès critique à son propre passé qui n'est consigné nulle part. Il ne se communique pas. Il est incompris et oublié au profit de la fausse mémoire spectaculaire du non-mémorable.”

“La réalité du temps a été remplacée par la publicité du temps.”

“Les force qu'elle a déchaînées suppriment la nécessité economique qui a été la base immuable des sociétés anciennes. Quand elle la remplace par la nécessité du développement economique infini, elle ne peut que remplacer la satisfatction des premiers besoins humains sommairement reconnus, par une fabrication ininterrompue de pseudo-besoins qui se ramènent au seul pseudo-besoin du maintien de son règne.”

“Le spectacle est le mauvais rêve de la société moderne enchaînée, qui n'exprime finalement que son désir de dormir. Le spectacle est le gardien de ce sommeil.”

“Le spectacle est la reconstruction matérielle de l'illusion religieuse.”

“Partout où il y a représentation indépendante, le spectacle se reconstitue.”

“Il est ce qui échappe à l'activité des hommes, à la reconsidération et à la correction de leur œuvre.”

“Dont tout «avoir» effectif doit tirer son prestige immédiat et sa fonction dernière.”

“Le spectacle est la principale production de la société actuelle.”

“Le but n'est rien, le développement est tout. Le spectacle ne veut en venir à rien d'autre qu'à lui-même.”

“Il est le soleil qui ne se couche jamais sur l'empire de la passivité moderne. Il recouvre toute la surface du monde et baigne indéfiniment dans sa propre gloire.”

“On ne peut opposer absraitement le spectacle et l'activité sociale effective.”

“The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.”

“He will essentially follow the language of the spectacle, for it is the only one he is familiar with.”

“The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.”

“The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.”

“I have written much less than most people who write; I have drunk much more than most people who drink.”

“Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.”

“In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood. ”

“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.”

“Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.”

“There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter.”

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. ”

“Pour savoir écrire, il faut avoir lu, et pour savoir lire, il faut savoir vivre ”