“To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.”

“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.”

“Purchasing power is a license to purchase power. The old proletariat sold its labour power in order to subsist; what little leisure time it had was passed pleasantly enough in conversations, arguments, drinking, making love, wandering, celebrating and rioting. The new proletarian sells his labour power in order to consume. When he’s not flogging himself to death to get promoted in the labour hierarchy, he’s being persuaded to buy himself objects to distinguish himself in the social hierarchy. The ideology of consumption becomes the consumption of ideology.”

“O trabalho foi aquilo que o homem achou de melhor para nada fazer da sua vida.”

“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.”

“Daydreaming subverts the world.”