“An Idea is an n-dimensional, continuous, defined multiplicity.”

“An Idea is an n-dimensional, continuous, defined multiplicity.”

— Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Why, no, boy: nothing can be made out of nothing.”

“Lear: Why, no, boy: nothing can be made out of nothing.”

— William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Love, the poet has said, is woman's whole existence.

“Love, the poet has said, is woman's whole existence. And if we look for a moment at Orlando writing at her table, we must admit that never was there a woman more fitted for that calling. Surely, since she is a woman, and a beautiful woman, and a woman in the prime of life, she will soon give over this pretence of writing and thinking and begin at least to think of a gamekeeper (and as long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking). And then she will write him a little note (and as long as she writes little notes nobody objects to a woman writing either)..”

— Virginia Woolf, Orlando

"... the effort is now being made to clamp down the freedom of the human spirit... "

"... the effort is now being made to clamp down the freedom of the human spirit... Now and then a thoughtless individual in one of the few democracies left in this world will even question the fundamental importance of absolutely untrammeled academic freedom."

— Abraham Flexner, The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge 

“Happiness is thus inherently hypocritical: it is the happiness of dreaming about things we do not really want.

“Happiness is thus, to put it in Badiou’s terms, not a category of truth, but a category of mere Being, and, as such, confused, indeterminate, inconsistent (recall the proverbial answer of a German imthe “thrilling romance of orthodoxy” migrant to the United States who, when asked “Are you happy?,” answered: “Yes, yes, I am very happy, aber glücklich bin ich nicht . . .”). It is a pagan category: for pagans, the goal of life is to live a happy life (the idea of living “happily ever after” is a Christianized version of paganism), and religious experience or political activity themselves are considered a higher form of happiness (see Aristotle)—no wonder the Dalai Lama himself has had such success recently preaching the gospel of happiness around the world, and no wonder he is finding the greatest response precisely in the United States, the ultimate empire of (the pursuit of ) happiness. . . . In short, “happiness” is a category of the pleasure principle, and what undermines it is the insistence of a Beyond of the pleasure principle.

In a strict Lacanian sense of the term, we should thus posit that "happiness" relies on the subject’s inability or unreadiness fully to confront the consequences of its desire: the price of happiness is that the subject remains stuck in the inconsistency of its desire. In our daily lives, we (pretend to) desire things which we do not really desire, so that ultimately, the worst thing that can happen is for us to get what we "officially" desire. Happiness is thus inherently hypocritical: it is the happiness of dreaming about things we do not really want.”

― Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”

― Michel Foucault, Madness & Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

The Zen position of non-thinking always harbors the danger of degenerating into not thinking.

“In Zen, the positive and creative aspects of human thinking have been neglected and only its dualistic and discriminative aspects have realized as something to be overcome. Reason in Buddhism Was only grasped as a negative principle … . The Zen position of non-thinking always harbors the danger of degenerating into not thinking… . Essentially, the standpoint of non-thinking should also be able to be said to have the possibility of giving life to the positive aspects of human thinking that have been developed in the West. But this possibility has not yet been actualized. Precisely the actualization and existentialization of this possibility must be the theme of the future for the standpoint of the true emptiness of the Eastern tradition.”

― Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought