Jean Francois Quotes & Sayings

I shall call modern that art which ... presents the fact that the unpresentable exists. To make visible that there is something which can be conceived and which can neither be seen nor made visible. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them," explained Revel. "It awakens only when the danger becomes deadly, imminent, and evident. By then, either there is too little time left for it to save itself, or the price of survival has become crushingly high. — Jean Francois Revel

I invite everyone to chose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition. — Jean-Francois Cope

Knowledge [savoir] in general cannot be reduced to science, nor even to learning [connaissance]. Learning is the set of statements which, to the exclusion of all other statements, denote or describe objects and may be declared true or false. Science is a subset of learning. It is also composed of denotative statements, but imposes two supplementary conditions on their acceptability: the objects to which they refer must be available for repeated access, in other words, they must be accessible in explicit conditions of observation; and it must be possible to decide whether or not a given statement pertains to the language judged relevant by the experts. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

One knows that frontal and/or profile photography is torn to pieces ... Inversely, what remains of the photograph must be seen as a fragment coming to fill a gap in the drawing. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

It was only with the emergence of the Conceptualist approaches of the late 1960s that the opposition between artists using photography and photographers became explicit. — Jean-Francois Chevrier

There has been a banking crisis, a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a geostrategic crisis and an environmental crisis. That's considerable in a country that's used to being protected. — Jean-Francois Cope

Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself. — Jean Francois Revel

On the other hand, in a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, both as a reality and as an issue, it is clear that language assumes a new importance. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

A human group transforms itself into a crowd when it suddenly responds to a suggestion rather than to reasoning, to an image rather than to an idea, to an affirmation rather than to proof, to the repetition of a phrase rather than to arguments, to prestige rather than to competence. — Jean Francois Revel

I know I'm breaking a taboo by using the term antiwhite racism, but I do so intentionally, because it's the reality some of our fellow citizens live with, and remaining quiet about it only aggravates their trauma. — Jean-Francois Cope

The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Antiwhite racism is developing in sections of our cities where individuals - some of whom have French nationality - contemptuously designate French people as gaulois on the pretext they don't share the same religion, color or origins. — Jean-Francois Cope

Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enter what is known as the postmodern age. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

There is no winner or loser - just one family, the U.M.P. The time for internal squabbles is behind us. — Jean-Francois Cope

A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

A new problem appears: devices that optimize the performance of the human body for the purpose of producing proof require additional expenditures. No money, no proof - and that means no verification of statements and no truth. The games of scientific language become the games of the rich, in which whoever is the wealthiest has the best chance of being right. An equation between wealth, efficiency, and truth is thus established. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

A man who never trusts himself never trusts anyone. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Most men only commit great crimes because of their scruples about petty ones. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

In a major matter no details are small. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

I always felt that with an Antoine Doinel film, Truffaut was taking a vacation, that Francois could relax when making a Doinel film. All of the language came to him very easily. 'The 400 Blows,' I felt, was a collage of all his childhood experiences. Every time he felt an Antoine Doinel film was necessary, he'd make one. — Jean-Pierre Leaud

Human beings tend to be unable to estimate how biased they are. — Jean-Francois Manzoni

The most mistrustful are often the greatest dupes. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

When you are obliged to make a statement that you know will cause displeasure, you must say it with every appearance of sincerity; this is the only way to make it palatable. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Weak souls always set to work at the wrong time. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

... We are in a system that doesn't give a rap about sacredness. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

We always weaken whatever we exaggerate. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

We weaken what we exaggerate. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

Every numerous assembly is a mob; everything there depends on instantaneous turns. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Beauty does not lie in the face. It lies in the harmony between a person and his or her industry. Beauty is expression. When I paint a mother I try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child. — Jean-Francois Millet

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

It is even more damaging for a minister to say foolish things than to do them. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Our self-love can be resigned to the sacrifice of everything but itself. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Increasingly, the central question is becoming who will have access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Every man whom chance alone has, by some accident, made a public character, hardly ever fails of becoming, in a short time, a ridiculous private one. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Saddam Hussein is a product of Western departments of state and big companies, just as Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco were born of the 'peace' imposed on their countries by the victors of the Great War. Saddam is such a product in an even more Flagrant and cynical way. Because the Iraqi dictatorship proceeds, as do the others, from the transfer of aporias in the capitalist system to vanquished, less developed, or simply less resistant countries. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

The ban would apply to the full-body veil known as the burqa or niqab. This is not an article of clothing - it is a mask, a mask worn at all times, making identification or participation in economic and social life virtually impossible. — Jean-Francois Cope

... Desire baffles knowledge and power. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

We love without reason, and without reason we hate. — Jean-Francois Regnard

To teach successfully we must tell all we know, but only what is adaptable to the student. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles. — Jean Francois Revel

To look, to record, to inscribe, to reproduce, to imitate, to reveal, to imagine are for me the seven keys of photographic imagination. — Jean-Francois Chevrier

It is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

One of man's greatest failings is that he looks almost always for an excuse, in the misfortune that befalls him through his own fault, before looking for a remedy-which means he often finds the remedy too late. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

And today more than ever, knowing about that society involves first of all choosing what approach the inquiry will take, and that necessarily means choosing how society can answer. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

The sea stood up before him, foaming, torn by lightning bolts, opening terrifying mouths that gobbled up the dense, hard black rains unleashed by the sky like hate. — Jean-Francois Beauchemin

Weakness has many stages. There is a difference between feebleness by the impotency of the will, of the will to the resolution, of the resolution to the choice of means, of the choice of the means to the application. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

How comes it that you curse, Frere Jean? It's only, said the monk, in order to embellish my language. They are the colors of Ciceronian rhetoric. — Francois Rabelais

My professor, he reminded us of Kant: to think by oneself, to think in accordance with oneself. Today they say that's logocentric, not politically correct. Streams must flow in the right direction so that they may converge. Why all this cultural bustling? Just to assure oneself that everyone is speaking of the same thing. Of what? Of Otherness. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

I want to put strongly and completely all that is necessary, for things weakly said might as well not be said at all. — Jean-Francois Millet

What guides Marxism, then, is a different model of society, and a different conception of the function of the knowledge that can be produced by society and acquired from it. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Are we, intellectual sirs, not actively or passively 'producing' more and more words, more books, more articles, ceaselessly refilling the pot-boiler of speech, gorging ourselves on it rather, seizing books and 'experiences', to metamorphose them as quickly as possible into other words, plugging us in here, being plugged in there, just like Mina on her blue squared oilcloth, extending the market and the trade in words of course, but also multiplying the chances of jouissance, scraping up intensities wherever possible, and never being sufficiently dead, for we too are required to go from forty to the hundred a day, and we will never play the whore enough, we will never be dead enough — Jean-Francois Lyotard

I have a thought for Nicolas Sarkozy, you know my loyalty on his account, but I profess it too for Jacques Chirac. — Jean-Francois Cope

Even now it is no longer composed of the traditional political class, but of a composite layer of corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organisations. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

People are afraid of everything. — Jean-Francois Cope

A photograph is analogous to a plaster cast taken from life, which is always inferior to a good statue. — Jean-Francois Millet

It's easier to fight one's enemies than to get on with one's friends. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

A man who does not trust himself will never really trust anybody. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

It is in great dangers that we see great courage. — Jean-Francois Regnard

Art will never come except from some small disregarded corner where an isolated and inspired man is studying the mysteries of nature. — Jean-Francois Millet

My sorrows are overwhelming, but my virtue is left to me. — Jean-Francois Ducis

I cannot understand why some people try to write a history of photography that is separated from the history of modern art. — Jean-Francois Chevrier

Because life, no matter what it is like, must be lived, and because to live is not merely to survive; it is to laugh, to think, to write. — Jean-Francois Steiner

The totalitarian phenomenon is not to be understood without making an allowance for the thesis that some important part of every society consists of people who actively want tyranny: either to exercise it themselves or - much more mysteriously - to submit to it. — Jean Francois Revel

Of all the passions, fear weakens judgment most. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

If we wish to discuss knowledge in the most highly developed contemporary society, we must answer the preliminary question of what methodological representation to apply to that society. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

... is postmodernity the pastime of an old man who scrounges in the garbage-heap of finality looking for leftovers, who brandishes unconsciousnesses, lapses, limits, confines, goulags, parataxes, non-senses, or paradoxes, and who turns this into the glory of his novelty, into his promise of change? — Jean-Francois Lyotard

... In the discourse of today's financial backers of research, the only credible goal is power. Scientists, technicians, and instruments are purchased not to find truth, but to augment power. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

To know how to dispense with things is to possess them. — Jean-Francois Regnard

If you have to make an unpopular speech, give it all the sincerity you can muster; that's the only way to sweeten it. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Superstition changes a man to a beast, fanaticism makes him a wild beast, and despotism a beast of burden. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

Where princes are concerned, a man who is able to do good is as dangerous and almost as criminal as a man who intends to do evil. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

It is amidst great perils we see brave hearts. — Jean-Francois Regnard

Liberalism does not preclude an organisation of the flow of money in which some channels are used in decision making while others are only good for the payment of debts. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Genius: Range of mind, power of imagination, and responsiveness of soul: this is genius. The man of genius has a soul with greater range, can therefore be struck by the feelings of all beings, is concerned with everything in nature, and never receives an idea that does not evoke a feeling. Everything stirs him and everything is retained within him.
When the soul has been moved by an object itself, it is even more affected by the memory of the object. But in a man of genius imagination goes further: it recalls ideas with a more vivid feeling than it received them, because to these ideas are connected a thousand others more appropriate to arouse the feeling. — Jean-Francois De Saint-Lambert

Many artists, having assimilated the Conceptualists' explorations to varying degrees, have reused the painterly model and use photography, quite consciously and systematically, to produce works that stand alone and exist as photographic paintings ... — Jean-Francois Chevrier

Timorous minds are much more inclined to deliberate than to resolve. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

The most joyful thing I know is the peace, the silence that one enjoys in the woods or on the tilled lands. — Jean-Francois Millet

Postmodern science - by concerning itself with such things as undecidables, the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized by incomplete information, "fracta", catastrophes, and pragmatic paradoxes - is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous, catastrophic, nonrectifiable, and paradoxical. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination. — Jean-Francois Lyotard

Photography has not invented anything. — Jean-Francois Chevrier

Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Nothing indicates the soundness of a man's judgment so much as knowing how to choose between two disadvantages. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

There are no small steps in great affairs. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

What is necessary is never a risk. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

If you meet a woman in a burqa, she can't reply to your smile. It's a denial of identity. — Jean-Francois Cope

To exaggerate is to weaken. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

Great men help dazzle the people; after that, they dazzle themselves even more dangerously. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

We never forget those who make us blush. — Jean-Francois De La Harpe

There are a certain number of extreme behaviours led by fundamentalists who are using their religion for political ends and use extremist techniques. — Jean-Francois Cope

It is the treating of the commonplace with the feeling of the sublime that gives to art its true power. — Jean-Francois Millet

Persecution to persons in a high rank stands them in the stead of eminent virtue. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

Principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground-floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d'Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendome, Grand Prior of France, Abbe of Saint Honore de Lerins; Francois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; Cesar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Jean Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble. — Victor Hugo

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. Under the general demand for slackening and for appeasement, we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return of terror, for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the differences ... — Jean-Francois Lyotard