Zygmunt Bauman Quotes

Quotes about:

• In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Modern Life, Liquid, Circumstances

  120 Copy quote

• You judge a society by the decency of living of the weakest

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Judging, Decency

  90 Copy quote

• We live in a globalising world. That means that all of us, consciously or not, depend on each other. Whatever we do or refrain from doing affects the lives of people who live in places we'll never visit.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Mean, People, World

  "Quality and inequality". www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2001.

  82 Copy quote

• Unlike 'real relationships', 'virtual relationships' are easy to enter and to exit. They look smart and clean, feel easy to use, when compared with the heavy, slow-moving, messy real stuff.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Real, Smart, Moving

  Anthony Elliott, Zygmunt Bauman (2007). “The contemporary Bauman”

  82 Copy quote

• You are a stranger, I am a stranger, we all remain strangers, and nevertheless we can like or even love each other.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Stranger, Love Each Other, Nevertheless

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  65 Copy quote

• The value of other people is that they have something unique to offer.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Unique, People, Offers

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  53 Copy quote

• Security without freedom means slavery.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Mean, Slavery, Security

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  12 Copy quote

• Questioning the ostensibly unquestionable premises of our way of life is arguably the most urgent of services we owe our fellow humans and ourselves.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Way, Life Is, Questioning

  Zygmunt Bauman (2013). “Globalization: The Human Consequences”, p.8, John Wiley & Sons

  78 Copy quote

• Madness is no madness when shared.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Insanity, Madness

  Zygmunt Bauman (2013). “The Individualized Society”, p.8, John Wiley & Sons

  26 Copy quote

• We live in a world of communication, everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Communication, Doors, People

  "Passion and pessimism" by Madeleine Bunting, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2003.

  33 Copy quote

• As long as we say: "Alright, it is truth for me, and I believe in it and I am ready to fight for it, but I accept that others have different beliefs - and so let me have a closer look at what they believe" - we can gain from our intercourse thanks to our difference, not despite our difference.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Believe, Fighting, Differences

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  65 Copy quote

• For one to be free there must be at least two.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Two, Asymmetry

  Mark Davis, Zygmunt Bauman (2008). “Freedom and Consumerism: A Critique of Zygmunt Bauman's Sociology”, p.91, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

  68 Copy quote

• Power, in a nutshell, is the ability to get things done, and politics is the ability to decide which things need to be done.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Power, Political, Needs

  82 Copy quote

• The rationality of the ruled is always the weapon of the rulers.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Weapons, Rationality, Rulers

  65 Copy quote

• Ingeniously, capitalism discovered that the economy may be moved not by satisfying existing needs, but by creating new ones.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Creating, Needs, May

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past, you who enter the world of fluid modernity.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Cutting, Past, Together

  Zygmunt Bauman (2013). “Liquid Modernity”, p.43, John Wiley & Sons

  17 Copy quote

• Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Car, Should, Stills

  28 Copy quote

• Avoid the crowd, avoid mass audiences, keep your own counsel, which is the counsel of philosophy of wisdom you can acquire and make your own.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Philosophy, Crowds, Mass

  Zygmunt Bauman (2013). “The Art of Life”, p.1991, John Wiley & Sons

  14 Copy quote

• Our bad luck is that our writing is linear, while we think circularly.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Writing, Thinking, Luck

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  7 Copy quote

• The woe of mortality makes humans God-like. It is because we know that we must die that we are so busy making life. It is because we are aware of mortality that we preserve the past and create the future. Mortality is ours without asking--but immortality is something we must build ourselves. Immortality is not a mere absence of death; it is defiance and denial of death. It is 'meaningful' only because there is death, that implacable reality which is to be defied.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Meaningful, Past, Reality

  81 Copy quote

• The Bible provides unity without imposing uniformity, without prohibiting change; it is a standing invitation to thinking and to take responsibilities.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Responsibility, Thinking, Unity

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

  5 Copy quote

• In our world of rampant individualisation, relationships are mixed blessings. They vacillate between a sweet dream and a nightmare, and there is no telling when one turns into the other.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Dream, Sweet, Blessing

  Anthony Elliott, Zygmunt Bauman (2007). “The contemporary Bauman”

  24 Copy quote

• The consumerist culture insists that swearing eternal loyalty to anything and anybody is imprudent, since in this world new glittering opportunities crop up daily.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Loyalty, Opportunity, Culture

  15 Copy quote

• You cannot have a cake and eat it too. Either you eat it, or you have it.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Cake

  21 Copy quote

• The carrying power of a bridge is not the average strength of the pillars, but the strength of the weakest pillar. I have always believed that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP but by the condition of its worst off.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Average, Bridges, Pillars

  "Modern lover". Interview with Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. November 12, 2005.

  26 Copy quote

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