Guy Debord Quotes

• Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.

  Guy Debord

  Fun, Garbage Disposal, People

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• 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.

  Guy Debord

  Modern, Accumulation, Representation

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• Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

  Guy Debord

  Ignorance, Belief, Periods

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• In our society now, we prefer to see ourselves living than living.

  Guy Debord

  Our Society

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• Revolution is not 'showing' life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.

  Guy Debord

  Order, Organization, People

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

  Guy Debord

  People, Social, Relation

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

  Guy Debord

  Powerful, Class, Claims

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

  Guy Debord

  World, Moments, Truth Is

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• The spectacle is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.

  Guy Debord

  Dream, Sleep, Wish

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• Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.

  Guy Debord

  Motivation, Real, Simple

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• ... 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.

  Guy Debord

  Focus, Culture, Existence

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• All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

  Guy Debord

  Representation, Mere

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• Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.

  Guy Debord

  Boredom, Revolutionary

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• It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak.

  Guy Debord

  Children, Reading, Age

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• The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. It is modest only on this one point, however, because this officially nonexistent bureaucracy simultaneously attributes the crowning achievements of history to its own infallible leadership. Though its existence is everywhere in evidence, the bureaucracy must be invisible as a class. As a result, all social life becomes insane.

  Guy Debord

  Powerful, Class, Achievement

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• 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.

  Guy Debord

  Writing, Expression, Ideas

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• Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

  Guy Debord

  Art, Past, Organization

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

  Guy Debord

  Language, Familiar

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• Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.

  Guy Debord

  Children, Adventure, Lost

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• What appears is good; what is good appears.

  Guy Debord

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• 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.

  Guy Debord

  Stories, Terrorism, States

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• In societies where modern conditions of productions prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation. The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be re-established. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation . . . The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

  Guy Debord

  Reality, People, Unity

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• Art ... can become the direct organisation of more highly evolved sensations.

  Guy Debord

  Art, Organisation, Direct

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• With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

  Guy Debord

  Events, Stories, Statistics

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• Behind the masks of total choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other.

  Guy Debord

  Choices, Different, Mask

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