Guy Debord Quotes

Quotes about:

• In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

  Guy Debord

  Modern, Accumulation, Representation

  Guy Debord (2012). “Society Of The Spectacle”, p.30, Bread and Circuses Publishing

  82 Copy quote

• In our society now, we prefer to see ourselves living than living.

  Guy Debord

  Our Society

  68 Copy quote

• The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.

  Guy Debord

  People, Social, Relation

  Guy Debord (2012). “Society Of The Spectacle”, p.30, Bread and Circuses Publishing

  50 Copy quote

• Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.

  Guy Debord

  Love, Funny, Humorous

  "Yes, too many of us are in pointless jobs - but don't despair" by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, www.theguardian.com. January 6, 2015.

  92 Copy quote

• ... just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing.

  Guy Debord

  Focus, Culture, Existence

  43 Copy quote

• Revolution is not 'showing' life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.

  Guy Debord

  Order, Organization, People

  49 Copy quote

• Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.

  Guy Debord

  Motivation, Real, Simple

  Guy Debord (2012). “Society Of The Spectacle”, p.32, Bread and Circuses Publishing

  44 Copy quote

• All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

  Guy Debord

  Representation, Mere

  Guy Debord (1994). “The Society of the Spectacle”, Zone Books (NY)

  38 Copy quote

• Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs.

  Guy Debord

  Ignorance, Belief, Periods

  Panegyric pt. 1 (1989)

  52 Copy quote

• With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

  Guy Debord

  Events, Stories, Statistics

  Guy Debord (1998). “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”, p.16, Verso

  19 Copy quote

• In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.

  Guy Debord

  World, Moments, Truth Is

  Guy Debord (1994). “The Society of the Spectacle”, Zone Books (NY)

  48 Copy quote

• Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always.

  Guy Debord

  Boredom, Revolutionary

  "The Bad Old Days Will End" by Guy Debord (November 1963); later quoted in "The Incomplete Works of the Situationist International" edited by Christopher Gray, 1974.

  37 Copy quote

• Behind the masks of total choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other.

  Guy Debord

  Choices, Different, Mask

  Guy Debord (2012). “Society Of The Spectacle”, p.45, Bread and Circuses Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• The spectacle is the bad dream of a modern society in chains and ultimately expresses nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.

  Guy Debord

  Dream, Sleep, Wish

  Guy Debord (2014). “The Society of the Spectacle”, p.7, Bureau of Public Secrets

  34 Copy quote

• Art need no longer be an account of past sensations. It can become the direct organization of more highly evolved sensations. It is a question of producing ourselves, not things that enslave us.

  Guy Debord

  Art, Past, Organization

  Internationale Situationist (Paris), No. 1, June 1958.

  27 Copy quote

• The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist.

  Guy Debord

  Powerful, Class, Claims

  Guy Debord (2014). “The Society of the Spectacle”, p.39, Bureau of Public Secrets

  46 Copy quote

• Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.

  Guy Debord

  Children, Adventure, Lost

  Guy Debord, Ken Knabb (2003). “Complete cinematic works: scripts, stills, documents”, A K Pr Distribution

  32 Copy quote

• Work is only justified by leisure time. To admit the emptiness of leisure time is to admit the impossibility of life.

  Guy Debord

  Leisure, Emptiness, Justified

  11 Copy quote

• Plagiarism is necessary, progress implies it

  Guy Debord

  Progress, Plagiarism

  Guy Debord (2012). “Society Of The Spectacle”, p.98, Bread and Circuses Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• What is false creates taste, and reinforces itself by knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic. And what is genuine is reconstructed as quickly as possible, to resemble the false.

  Guy Debord

  Taste, Genuine, Eliminating

  Guy Debord (1998). “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”, p.50, Verso

  7 Copy quote

• Images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream, and the former unity of life is lost forever. Apprehended in a partial way, reality unfolds in a new generality as a pseudo-world apart, solely as an object of contemplation. The tendency toward the specialization of images-of-the-world finds its highest expression in the world of the autonomous image, where deceit deceives itself. The spectacle in its generality is a concrete inversion of life, and, as such the autonomous movement of non-life.

  Guy Debord

  Reality, Expression, Forever

  Guy Debord (1994). “The Society of the Spectacle”, Zone Books (NY)

  11 Copy quote

• The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.

  Guy Debord

  Stories, Terrorism, States

  Guy Debord (1998). “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”, p.24, Verso

  18 Copy quote

• No longer is science asked to understand the world, or to improve any part of it. It is asked instead to immediately justify everything that happens... spectacular domination has cut down the vast tree of scientific knowledge in order to make itself a truncheon.

  Guy Debord

  Cutting, Order, Tree

  "Comments on the Society of the Spectacle". Book by Guy Debord, 1988.

  10 Copy quote

• As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specialisations that they actually live.

  Guy Debord

  Stars, Order, People

  Guy Debord, Ken Knabb (2003). “Complete cinematic works: scripts, stills, documents”, A K Pr Distribution

  4 Copy quote

• The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. It is modest only on this one point, however, because this officially nonexistent bureaucracy simultaneously attributes the crowning achievements of history to its own infallible leadership. Though its existence is everywhere in evidence, the bureaucracy must be invisible as a class. As a result, all social life becomes insane.

  Guy Debord

  Powerful, Class, Achievement

  Guy Debord (2014). “The Society of the Spectacle”, p.39, Bureau of Public Secrets

  20 Copy quote

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