Lacan Language Quotes & Sayings

It is only through the radical defile of speech that we fall into the illusion that language is a register of conscious construction — Lacan Jacques

What we are dealing with here is another version of the Lacanian 'il n'y a pas de rapport ... ': if, for Lacan, there is no sexual relationship, then, for Marxism proper, there is no relationship between economy and politics, no 'meta-language' enabling us to grasp the two levels from the same neutral standpoint, although - or, rather, because - these two levels are inextricably intertwined. — Slavoj Zizek

Strictly speaking, one should not even rightly compare virginity to marriage because you cannot make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil. — St. Jerome

When do I actually encounter the Other 'beyond the wall of language', in the rel of his or her being? Not when I am able to describe her, not even when I learn her values, dreams, and so on, but only when I encounter the Other in her moment of jouissance: when I discern in her a tiny detail (a compulsive gesture, a facial expression, a tic) which signals the intensity of the real of jouissance. This encounter with the real is always traumatic; there is something at least minimally obscene about it; I cannot simply integrate it into my universe, there is always a gulf separating me from it. — Slavoj Zizek

The unconscious is structured like a language. — Jacques Lacan

As I get older ... I start to realize that life ain't half bad. Each year, I'm amazed that I'm still alive. I don't take any of this for granted, I'm a lucky dude. — Dave Grohl

For Lacan, language is a gift as dangerous to humanity as the horse was to the Trojans: it offers itself to our use free of charge, but once we accept it, it colonizes us. — Slavoj Zizek

A lot of my building blocks - who I am kind of as an artist - all came from being in L.A. — Steve Aoki

I had no idea that it was gonna take off the way it did. I thought we made a good movie. — Morgan Spurlock

Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order: these terms in Lacan are not exactly synonymous, but they are intimately allied. They are sometimes spoken of by him as the 'Other' - as that which like language is always anterior to us and will always escape us, that which brought us into being as subjects in the first place but which always outruns our grasp. We have seen that for Lacan our unconscious desire is directed towards this Other, in the shape of some ultimately gratifying reality which we can never have; but it is also true for Lacan that our desire is in some way always received from the Other too. We desire what others - our parents, for instance - unconsciously desire for us; and desire can only happen because we are caught up in linguistic, sexual and social relations - the whole field of the 'Other' - which generate it. — Terry Eagleton

I felt a combination of happiness and humility [ to People Magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People ]. At the same time there's a lot of pressure, because people can approach you whose intentions aren't in the best place, and they can say things that are very hurtful. And on one of those days when you wake up and you just go and get your coffee without worrying about looking your best, you make yourself vulnerable to someone who'd say something like, "You look awful for being on the Top 100 list." — Zoe Saldana

Marriage is what you make of it, and God has many versions of what that looks like based on what different souls need, in order to grow. — Shannon L. Alder

It is a truism of epistolary psychology that, for example, a Christmas thank-you note written on December 26 can say any old thing, but if you wait until February, you are convinced that nothing less than Middlemarch will do. — Anne Fadiman

Nietzsche said we will never rid ourselves of God because we have too much faith in grammar/language.

Lacan said because of the religious tenets of language, religion will triumph.

Chomsky, master linguist, says 'there are no skeptics. You can discuss it in a philosophy seminar but no human being can - in fact - be a skeptic.'

These musings shed light on Soren K's leap to faith idea. This is more nuanced than the circular leap of faith argument he's been wrongly accused of...

Soren is saying that, as we use the logic of language to express existence and purpose, we will always leap TO faith in a superior, all encompassing, loving force that guides our lives.

This faith does not negate our reason. It simply implies that the reasoning of this superior force is superior to our own. Edwin Abbott crystalizes this in Flatland. — Chester Elijah Branch

If somebody had told me when I was starting composition in Helsinki in the '70s that I would end up in L.A. and to describe that journey, those 17 years with the philharmonic and building the hall and this and that, I would have said, "This is a fairy tale of the first order." — Esa-Pekka Salonen

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming. — Jacques Lacan

In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth. — Jacques Lacan

[B]y reinterpreting Freudianism in terms of language, a pre-eminently social activity, Lacan permits us to explore the relations between the unconscious and human society. One way of describing his work is to say that he makes us recognize that the unconscious is not some kind of seething, tumultuous, private region 'inside' us, but an effect of our relations with one another. The unconscious is, so to speak, 'outside' rather than 'within' us - or rather it exists 'between' us, as our relationships do. — Terry Eagleton

If this constant sliding and hiding of meaning were true of conscious life, then we would of course never be able to speak coherently at all. If the whole of language were present to me when I spoke, then I would not be able to articulate anything at all. The ego, or consciousness, can therefore only work by repressing this turbulent activity, provisionally nailing down words on to meanings. Every now and then a word from the unconscious which I do not want insinuates itself into my discourse, and this is the famous Freudian slip of the tongue or parapraxis. But for Lacan all our discourse is in a sense a slip of the tongue: if the process of language is as slippery and ambiguous as he suggests, we can never mean precisely what we say and never say precisely what we mean. Meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near-miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue. — Terry Eagleton

James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together. — Vonda Shepard