Slavoj Zizek Quotes

I think the Irish woman was freed from slavery by bingo. They can go out now, dressed up, with their handbags and have a drink and play bingo. And they deserve it.

Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.

Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

The greatest event in human history. 26 million of our fellow creatures … bursting their chains and throwing off in an instant, the degrading yoke of slavery—it is a scene so new, interesting and sublime, that the heart which cannot participate in the triumph, must either have been vitiated by illiberal politics, or be naturally depraved.

I feel liberated being around women who are liberated.

And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.

For some slaves, the first step out of bondage is to learn to see their lives with new eyes. Their reality is a social world where they have their place and some assurance of a subsistence diet. Born into slavery, they cannot easily redefine their lives outside the frame of enslavement.

In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit , but as a limiting situation which they can transform.

Jah come to break downpression, rule equality, wipe away transgression, set the captives free.

The not so simple Truth is that we must be psychologically free in order to resist and we must resist in order to be free, and all of this requires an understanding of what bondage has been, of what it continues to be and of its ramifications for the future.

Even revolution, which transforms a concrete situation of oppression by establishing the process of liberation, must confront this phenomenon. Many of the oppressed who directly or indirectly participate in revolution intend - conditioned by the myths of the old order - to make it their private revolution. The shadow of their former oppressor is still cast over them.

We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.

O freedom, first delight of human kind!

You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order - order out of chaos. But we will.

A work of art can be called revolutionary if, by virtue of the aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom and the rebelling forces, thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation).

Freedom just around the corner for you, but with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

Many whites, even white Southerners told me that even though it may have seemed like the blacks were being freed (by my actions) they felt more free and at ease themselves. They thought that my action didn't just free blacks but them, too.

Liberation is a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.

The beauty of truth: whether it is bad or good, it is liberating.

To free yourself from the past you must break the rules of silence and compliance.

When people made up their minds that they wanted to be free and took action, then there was a change.

I am the dream and the hope of the slave

We will not forget that Liberty has made her home here, nor shall her chosen altar be neglected...A stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and mans oppression until Liberty enlightens the world.