Paul Virilio Quotes

Quotes about:

• When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.

  Paul Virilio

  Technology, Negativity, Progress

  Paul Virilio, Philippe Petit, Sylvère Lotringer (1999). “Politics of the Very Worst”, Semiotext

  61 Copy quote

• There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.

  Paul Virilio

  Dream, Eye, Blind Spots

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• Today, everything is about speed and real time. We are no longer concerned with real space.

  Paul Virilio

  Real, Space, Today

  Source: ctheory.net

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• Virtuality will destroy reality.

  Paul Virilio

  Reality

  Source: ctheory.net

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• To regain our liberty (and our distance), we must slow the images down.

  Paul Virilio

  Distance, Liberty

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• Digital messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery; the shock effect always wins out over the consideration of the informational content.

  Paul Virilio

  Winning, Messages, Digital

  Paul Virilio (2005). “The Information Bomb”, p.143, Verso

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• How can we live if there is no more here and everything is now?

  Paul Virilio

  Ifs

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• The true problem with virtual reality is that orientation is no longer possible. We have lost our points of reference to orient ourselves. The de-realized man is a disoriented man.

  Paul Virilio

  Reality, Men, Problem

  Source: ctheory.net

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• To me, dance is an extraordinary thing, more extraordinary than most people usually think. Dance preceded writing, speaking and music. When mute people speak their body language, it is true speaking rather than handicap, this is the first word and the first writing. Thus to me, the body is fundamental.

  Paul Virilio

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: ctheory.net

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• All of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it...The great stroke of luck for the military class's terrorism is that no one recognizes it. People don't recognize the militarized part of their identity, of their consciousness.

  Paul Virilio

  Military, Class, Knowing

  Paul Virilio, Sylvère Lotringer (1997). “Pure war”, Semiotext

  37 Copy quote

• Images contaminate us like viruses.

  Paul Virilio

  Viruses

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• The ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture.

  Paul Virilio

  Technological Development, Democracy, Culture

  Source: ctheory.net

  14 Copy quote

• These new technologies try to make virtual reality more powerful than actual reality, which is the true accident. The day when virtual reality becomes more powerful than reality will be the day of the big accident. Mankind never experienced such an extraordinary accident.

  Paul Virilio

  Powerful, Technology, Reality

  Source: ctheory.net

  4 Copy quote

• The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.

  Paul Virilio

  Light, Doe, World

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• Speed now illuminates reality whereas light once gave objects of the world their shape.

  Paul Virilio

  Reality, Light, World

  Paul Virilio, Bertrand Richard (2012). “The Administration of Fear”, p.41, MIT Press

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• Cyberspace is acting like God and deals with the idea of God who is, sees and hears everything.

  Paul Virilio

  Ideas, Acting, Cyberspace

  Source: ctheory.net

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• What is accidented is reality.

  Paul Virilio

  Reality

  Source: ctheory.net

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• We are entering a world where there won't be one but two realities, just like we have two eyes or hear bass and treble tones, just like we now have stereoscopy and stereophony: there will be two realities: the actual, and the virtual. Thus there is no simulation, but substitution. Reality has become symmetrical. The splitting of reality in two parts is a considerable event which goes far beyond simulation.

  Paul Virilio

  Eye, Reality, Two

  Source: ctheory.net

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• Today, the media handle information as if it was a religious artefact.

  Paul Virilio

  Religious, Media, Information

  Source: ctheory.net

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• One day the virtual world might win over the real world.

  Paul Virilio

  Real, Winning, One Day

  Source: ctheory.net

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• People make fun of cybersex, but it's really something to take into account: it is a drama, a split of the human being! The human being can now be changed into some kind of spectrum or ghost who has sex at a distance. That is really scary because what used to be the most intimate and the most important relationship to reality is being split. This is no simulation but the coexistence of two separate worlds.

  Paul Virilio

  Sex, Fun, Distance

  Source: ctheory.net

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• The field of vision is comparable, for me, to the terrain of an archaeological dig. To see is to be on guard, to wait for what emerges from the background, without any name, without any particular interest: what was silent will speak, what is closed will open and will take on a voice.

  Paul Virilio

  Names, Voice, Waiting

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• Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, but more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.

  Paul Virilio

  Fall, Science, Aggravation

  Paul Virilio (2005). “The Information Bomb”, p.2, Verso

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• The technologies of virtual reality are attempting to make us see from beneath, from inside, from behind... as if we were God.

  Paul Virilio

  Technology, Reality, Attempting

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I don't believe in simulationism, I believe that the word is already old-fashioned. As I see it, new technologies are substituting a virtual reality for an actual reality. And this is more than a phase: it's a definite change.

  Paul Virilio

  Believe, Technology, Reality

  Source: ctheory.net

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