On Contradictions

“One of the ways out of a contradiction is innovation. We can adapt our ideas and practices to new circumstances and learn to be a far better and more tolerant person from the experience.” (3)

“There is a powerful subjective element in defining and feeling the power of contradictions” (3)

"At the outset, however, I must first open up what is perhaps the most important contradictions of all: that between reality and appearance in the world in which we live." (4)

“Rarely is it the case that what is created and what is destroyed is predetermined and rarely is it the case that everything that is created is bad and everything that was good was destroyed… Crises are moments of transformation in which capital typically reinvents itself and morphs into something else.” (4)

“’If everything were as it appeared on the surface,’ [Marx] wrote, ‘there would be no need for science.’” (4)

Phenemonology

"...cognition is a faculty of a definite kind of scope, and thus, without a more precise definition of its nature and limits, we might grasp clouds of error instead of the heaven of truth." (46)

"…instead of putting up with excuses which create the incapacity of Science by assuming relationships of this kind in order to be exempt from the hard work of Science, while at the same time giving the impression of working seriously and zealously; instead of bothering to refute all these ideas, we could reject them out of hand as adventitious and arbitrary…" (48)

"... the resolve, in Science, not to give oneself over to the thoughts of others, upon mere authority, but to examine everything for oneself and follow only one's own conviction, or better still, to produce everything oneself, and accept only one's own deed as what is true." (50)

“For an examination consists in applying an accepted standard, and in determining whether something is right or wrong on the basis of the resulting agreement or disagreement of the thing examined…” (52)

“If we designate knowledge as the Notion, but the essence or the True as what exists, or the object, then the examination consists in seeing whether the Notion corresponds to the object. “ (53)

The Doors of Perception

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. (12)

From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes. Most island universes are sufficiently like one another to permit of inferential understanding or even of mutual empathy or "feeling into." (13)

A rose is a rose is a rose. But these chair legs were chair legs were St. Michael and all the angels. (28)

However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for. (29)

"One ought to be able" I said, "to see these trousers as infinitely important and human beings as still more infinitely important." (35)

Vermeer never asked his girls to look like apples. On the contrary, he insisted on their being girls to the very limit--but always with the proviso that they refrain from behaving girlishly. (38-39)

All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all. (52)

"If you started in the wrong way," I said in answer to the investigator's questions, "everything that happened would be a proof of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self-validating. You couldn't draw a breath without knowing it was part of the plot." (57)

Marx

...the worker sinks to the level of commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities... (70)

But the estrangement is manifested not only in the result but in the act of production--within the producing activity itself. How would the worker come to face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the very act of production he was estranging himself from himself? (73)

Man is a species being, not only because in practice and in theory he adopts the species as his object (his own as well as those of other things), but--and this is only another way of expressing it--but also because he treats himself as the actual, living species; because he treats himself as a universal and therefore a free being. (75)

Appropriation appears as estrangement, as alienation; and alienation appears as appropriation, estrangement as true enfranchisement. (81)

Slouka: Listening for Silence

...silence, like light or love, requires a medium to give it meaning, takes on the color of its host, adapts easily to our fears and needs. (40)

As silence disappears, the world draws tighter, borders collapse, the public and private bleed and intermix. (41)

The harvest of dictatorship, properly understood, is not death, but silence. (43)

Art, whatever its medium, attempts to force a wedge beneath the closed lid of the world, and fails; the artist, in his or her minutes and seconds, attempts to say--to paint, to carve; in sum, to communicate--what ultimately cannot be communicated. (44)

Galileo

Gawking is not seeing. (49)

Because we are like the worms who are little and have dim eyes and can hardly see the stars at all, and the new astronomy is a framework of guesses or very little more--yet. (50)

We are aware that there are phenomena which are beyond us, but man can't expect to understand everything. (72)

It is not given to man to know the truth: it is granted to him to seek after the truth. (79)

Beaten humanity can lift its head. A man has stood up and said No. (113)

"Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero."

"Unhappy is the land that needs a hero." (115)

This age of ours turned out to be a whore, spattered with blood. Maybe, new ages look like blood-spattered whores. (124)

Kino-Eye

The most scrupulous examination does not reveal a single film, a single artistic experiment, properly directed to the emancipation of the camera, which is reduced to a state of pitiable slavery, of subordination to the imperfections and the shortsightedness of the human eye. (14)

We therefore take as the point of departure the use of the camera as a kino-eye, more perfect than the human eye, for the exploration  of the chaos of visual phenomena that fills space. (15)

I am kino-eye. I am a builder. (17)

I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. (17)

Frankenstein (Pt. 2)

I am malicious because I am miserable. (104)

My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union. (109)

But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be--a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and intolerable to myself. (116-117)

All my speculation and hopes are as nothing; and, like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. (157)

..but, I fear, I have gained him only to know his value, and lose him. (157)