Jacques Lacan Quotes

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home?

Nothingness haunts Being.

If there is existence, there must be non-existence. And if there was a time when nothing existed, there must have been a time before that - when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the category of existence or non-existence?

Nothingness is the basis of everything.

It is the want that creates the body.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

Life is simply the reification of the process of living.

I want to live.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Something cannot emerge from nothing.

One believes that if nothing happens, one disappears. That is not true.

People are searching for something they don't have in their lives. There's an unfulfilled need.

Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.

If emptiness is empty, how can something be borne or awaken from it?

A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?

Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the cup depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the room depends. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility.

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence, without you moving, slicing the noon like a blue flower, without you walking later through the fog and the cobbles, without the light you carry in your hand, golden, which maybe others will not see, which maybe no one knew was growing like the red beginnings of a rose. In short, without your presence: without your coming suddenly, incitingly, to know my life, gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind: since then I am because you are, since then you are, I am, we are, and through love I will be, you will be, we will be.

Being is born of not being.

Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.

Consciousness is a being the nature of which is to be conscious of the nothingness of its being.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.

The desire not to be anything is the desire not to be.