Guy Debord quotes

Guy Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, and founding member of the Situationist International. His work critiqued consumer society and introduced influential concepts such as "the spectacle." He profoundly shaped avant-garde thought and radical politics in the 20th century. Here are 32 of his quotes:

Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea. (Guy Debord)
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. View quote
Guy Debord
Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit. View quote
Guy Debord
Quotations are useful in periods of ignorance or obscurantist beliefs. View quote
Guy Debord
Boredom is always counter-revolutionary. Always. View quote
Guy Debord
There is nothing more natural than to consider everything as starting from oneself, chosen as the center of the world; one finds oneself thus capable of condemning the world without even wanting to hear its deceitful chatter. View quote
Guy Debord
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption ... is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal. View quote
Guy Debord
The Sage of Toronto... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a "global village" instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle's present vulgarity. View quote
Guy Debord
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images. View quote
Guy Debord
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. View quote
Guy Debord
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)
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. View quote
Guy Debord
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. View quote
Guy Debord
Everyone accepts that there are inevitably little areas of secrecy reserved for specialists; as regards things in general, many believe they are in on the secret. View quote
Guy Debord
In the zone of perdition where my youth went as if to complete its education, one would have said that the portents of an imminent collapse of the whole edifice of civilization had made an appointment. View quote
Guy Debord
It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line.... Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak. View quote
Guy Debord
All that once was directly lived has become mere representation. View quote
Guy Debord
In a world that has REALLY been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood. View quote
Guy Debord
Behind the masks of total choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other. View quote
Guy Debord
The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist. View quote
Guy Debord
Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures. (Guy Debord)
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. View quote
Guy Debord
I have written much less than most people who write; I have drunk much more than most people who drink. View quote
Guy Debord
... 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. View quote
Guy Debord
The Mafia is not an outsider in this world; it is perfectly at home. Indeed, in the integrated spectacle it stands as the model of all advanced commercial enterprises. View quote
Guy Debord