Giorgio Agamben Quotes

• Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system

  Giorgio Agamben

  War, Mean, Political

  Giorgio Agamben (2008). “State of Exception”, p.2, University of Chicago Press

  78 Copy quote

• God did not die; he was transformed into money

  Giorgio Agamben

  Transformed, Dies

  51 Copy quote

• One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Children, Order, Law

  Giorgio Agamben (2008). “State of Exception”, p.64, University of Chicago Press

  75 Copy quote

• In the eyes of authority - and maybe rightly so - nothing looks more like a terrorist than the ordinary man.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Eye, Men, Ordinary

  Giorgio Agamben (2009). “What is an Apparatus?: And Other Essays”, p.35, Stanford University Press

  52 Copy quote

• Those who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands...Contemporariness, then, is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disconnection.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Demand, Contemporary, Disconnection

  57 Copy quote

• The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Space, States, Camps

  Giorgio Agamben (2017). “The Omnibus Homo Sacer”, p.139, Stanford University Press

  56 Copy quote

• Life and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts, which as such acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Life And Death, Decision, Political

  Giorgio Agamben (2017). “The Omnibus Homo Sacer”, p.135, Stanford University Press

  31 Copy quote

• To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) — this is the perpetual illusion of morality.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Believe, Decision, Morality

  47 Copy quote

• Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Past, Remembrance, Becoming

  37 Copy quote

• The coming being is whatever being.

  Giorgio Agamben

  21 Copy quote

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