Quotes

Nowhere do the “politicians” form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than in North America. Here, each of the two major parties, to which rule alternates, is itself governed by people who make a business out of politics, who speculate on seats in the federal and state legislatures, or who live off agitation for their party and are rewarded with jobs when they win. It is well known how Americans have been trying for 30 years to shake off this yoke that has become unbearable, and how, despite all this, they are sinking deeper and deeper into this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we can best see how this independence of state power from society, of which it was originally intended to be a mere tool, is taking place. Here where there is no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, except the few men to guard the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent employment or pension rights. And yet here we have two great gangs of political speculators alternately seizing the power of the state and exploiting it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends – and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, ostensibly in its service, but in reality dominating and plundering it.

London, on the 20th anniversary of the Paris Commune, March 18, 1891

Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.

Simulation is the situation created by any system of signs when it becomes sophisticated enough, autonomous enough, to abolish its own referent and to replace it with itself.

With an evermore increase of industrialisation the machine stops being merely a tool, develops a life of its own and imposes its rhythm onto human. Operating it he moves mechanically, becomes part of the machine.

Racing is like life; it’s not always about who’s the fastest, but who can handle the curves.

Money is the barometer of a society’s morals. When you see that deals are no longer made voluntarily but under duress, that in order to produce you need the permission of people who produce nothing, that money flows to those who trade not in goods but in favours, that people get rich through bribery and connections, not through work, that the laws do not protect you from these people but these people from you, that corruption is rewarded and honesty punished, then you know that your society is on the verge of collapse.

The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects, and its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.

To Do is To Be – Friedrich Nietzsche

To Be is To Do – Immanuel Kant

Do Be Do Be Do – Frank Sinatra

Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world of it’s proper value.