Quotes

So the universe is not quite as you thought it was.

You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.

and they gather, to sing the sun aloft
while the night gathers in folds around their feet.
the poppies are crushed beneath
heavy stone gods with cracked faces.
two hands joined
to brush away the ash left by a burning morning

Technology is both poisoning and curing. At its first appearance, however, it is poisoning. It becomes curative when you have what I call the second moment of epochality of technics—the process of appropriation of a new technical system by society and the development of new modes of psychic and collective individuation based on this technical system. So, the problem of disadjustment is what was called by Shakespeare “the time is out of joint.” What is creating this being out of joint? That is the question. And my answer is: the process of technical exteriorization.

For instance: at this very moment I am exteriorizing myself. Speaking with you, I am exteriorizing myself. And that means: I am technicizing myself. If I talk with you, I create new words. I very much like to create new words. A word is also a new technical object. The opposition between technics and speech for me is completely artificial.

Now, for a human being, to live is to individuate oneself. How am I individuating myself? By exteriorizing myself. And in the same way, I am interiorizing myself, because when I speak to you, I am listening to what I say, so I interiorize myself. Now this process of exteriorization-interiorization is the originary process of psychic and social individuation. So you can see very clearly that at the beginning of psychic activity you always already have technics, i.e., technical individuation.

Now, you might not be a professional speaker, like me, but you might for instance produce flint stones. Suppose you are a prehistoric man and you are producing stone tools. It is exactly the same thing. That is what I try to describe in my first book Technics and Time: The Fault of Epimetheus. When pre-historic man is producing flint stones, thereby exteriorizing his experience, he is in fact transforming his brain, his psyche.

I am a socialist because I believe that socialism will solve the misery of the world — give work to the man who is hungry and idle and at least give to little children the right to be born free … I believe socialism is practical.

You tell me the unemployed are unfit. Under socialism they will not be unfit because they will not be overtaxed. With the idle rich and idle poor working, and the work day 4 hours long, their bodies will grow strong again and their minds sane.

There are so many people in prison who should be out — with their minds and bodies given a chance to grow straight. There are so many out of prison who more deserve to be inside. There are those who enslave men and women and little children, paying wages that will not let them live…. It is them and the system under which they live that are responsible for the unemployed who have been treated like inhuman things by our society.

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Unlike some modern pagan groups the ancient Egyptians did not invoke deity into a sacred image only to dismiss or bid farewell to that divine energy at the conclusion of ritual. The continuous beneficent presence of Netjer was a major objective for the Egyptian cult. The living presence of the deity in this world was the purpose of the daily rites in the temples. In Egyptian tradition the god or goddess is not experienced as a lord/lady in absentia, or as one who upon occasion visits this world, but rather as a numinous and powerfully present divine reality.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

A woman should be… whatever the fuck she wants

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

I am
convinced
that different
people
awaken
different beasts
in you.