Agamben State Quotes & Sayings

The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule. — Giorgio Agamben

Perhaps the greatest definition I think of character and quality is people who when they're truly great rather than making you feel that tall they make you feel that tall, that they're greatness as it were improves you. — Stephen Fry

Adversity, and perseverance and all these things can shape you. They can give you a value and a self-esteem that is priceless. — Scott Hamilton

There is no head of state in the world today who is not in virtuality a criminal. Those who shoulder the dreary mantle of sovereignty know that their turn may come to be branded a criminal by their colleagues. We certainly will not be the ones to complain. For the sovereign, who freely consented to donning the executioner's clothes, is now finally manifesting his originary kinship with the criminal. — Giorgio Agamben

One of the essential characteristics of the state of exception-the provisional abolition of the distinction among legislative, executive, and judicial powers-here shows its tendency to become a lasting practice of government. — Giorgio Agamben

Pointing to a trend in Western democracies, Agamben posits that the declaration of an emergency state of exception itself has gradually been replaced by a "generalization of the paradigm of security as the normal technique of government" (2003/2005, 14), that is, the state of exception or emergency has become integrated in the normal functioning of the state. — Nicholas De Genova

He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system — Giorgio Agamben

The thought of security bears within it an essential risk. A state which has security as its sole task and source of legitimacy is a fragile organism; it can always be provoked by terrorism to become more terroristic. — Giorgio Agamben

And so, being in Heaven, it was easy for him to lose sight of earth. — Victor Hugo

I always wanted a child. Being a mother is the central thing in my life. — Carol Ann Duffy

Eugene V. Debs has always been one of my heroes. — Clarence Darrow