Fantasmatic Quotes & Sayings

For my part, whether sailing in cruiser or dinghy, I shall remain myself. My sails are not puffed out with the north wind in my favour, nor am I beating into the southern gales of affliction. — Horace

Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

All Americans should have access to quality, affordable health care. — Christopher Dodd

Her vivid smile was like a light held up to dazzle me. — Edith Wharton

Thus, it does not seem clear (to us) that there is truly a unified research program here, under the name of materialism. The apparent consensus could be something of a mirage, with the only thing holding it together being a denial of the Soul Hypothesis. If so, it begins to look more like a shared assumption than a shared discovery. And of course there can be consensuses based on fashion and the spirit of the age, as well as consensuses based on observation and reason. Even scientists must always be on guard to make sure they are part of the latter rather than the former. The honorable mantle of the scientist conveys no inherent infallibility in this regard. — Mark C. Baker

In order effectively to liberate oneself from the grip of existing social reality, one should first renounce the transgressive fantasmatic supplement that attaches us to it. — Slavoj Zizek

Like most of my poems, 'Lie' has several sources: I read a very troubling book called The Sixth Extinction. I took note of the way people, including me, enjoy talking knowledgeably about how the world will end. I drove to Tucson and saw the desert flowering on either side of the road. And I glanced at my spam to see what people wanted to sell me these days. — Rae Armantrout

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others. — Moliere

Whatever is happening here, it definitely bypassed go and went straight to really fucking weird without collecting two hundred dollars. — Sarah McCarry

There are many families where the whole interest of life is centered upon the dog. — Jerome K. Jerome

Why did the Clinton Administration continue to liberalize export controls on sensitive technologies even after it learned that China had stolen designs? — Charles Bass

One rotation that I unexpectedly enjoyed was surgery. I knew I was too clumsy to become a surgeon and did not have the traditional gung-ho mentality. — Barron H. Lerner

To reclaim a real political agency means first of all accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital. What is being disavowed in the abjection of evil and ignorance onto fantasmatic Others is our own complicity in planetary networks of oppression. What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation. The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us. There is a sense in which it simply is the case that the political elite are our servants; the miserable service they provide from us is to launder our libidos, to obligingly re-present for us our disavowed desires as if they had nothing to do with us. The — Mark Fisher

Body language, when you know how to read it, can be more expressive than speech. (Mercy) — Patricia Briggs