Philosophy Quotes

"Philosophy must engage with the real world."

"The sacred is the profane turned inside out, revealing what civilization keeps hidden."

"Sacrifice was once the language of the sacred; now we have lost the grammar."

"The taboo exists only because we cannot resist violating it."

"Authenticity is impossible; all we can offer is the intensity of our embrace of artifice."

"The acephalous state—to think without a head, to feel without mediation."

"The obscene is what we hide from ourselves so we can remain civilized."

"The mind is a labyrinth designed to keep us from the exit."

"The moral person is often the most spiritually impoverished."

"We are each the living site of conflicting desires that refuse reconciliation."

"The philosopher is one who has learned to live comfortably with irresolution."

"Common sense is not something rigid and immobile, but is continually transforming itself."

"The philosophy of praxis is the modern form of materialism."

"The factory is the model for all modern institutions of the subordinate classes."

"Moral philosophy without a material basis is merely ideology."

"Folklore is the philosophy of non-philosophers and deserves serious study."

"Philosophy must be made popular to become a force that changes society."

"Common sense is shaped by the dominant ideology but contains seeds of alternative understanding."

"Reason has become an instrument. There is a tragic irony in the attempt to use the tools of reason for purposes which transcend all reason."

"In a totally administered world, even thought becomes a luxury good."

"Reason without passion is merely calculation."

"The machinery of exchange reduces all quality to quantity."

"The suppression of particularity is the price of enlightenment."

"The individual personality is an illusion of late capitalism."

"The reification of consciousness is the basic problem of any Marxist aesthetics."

"Transcendence without transformation is mere escapism."

"The subject and object are mediated through the social totality."

"Subjectivity itself is historically constituted through material conditions."

"Consciousness is not sovereign but determined by the material conditions of production."

"False consciousness is not stupidity but the internalization of oppressive structures."