{
  "type": "author",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "name": "Slavoj Žižek",
  "slug": "slavoj-zizek",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek.md",
  "image": null,
  "quotes_count": 36,
  "books": [
    {
      "title": "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce",
      "slug": "first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce",
      "quotes_count": 5,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso/slavoj-zizek/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce_978-17-8663-593-8.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce"
    },
    {
      "title": "In Defense of Lost Causes",
      "slug": "in-defense-of-lost-causes",
      "quotes_count": 1,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso/slavoj-zizek/in-defense-of-lost-causes_978-17-8663-079-7.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/in-defense-of-lost-causes"
    },
    {
      "title": "Less Than Nothing",
      "slug": "less-than-nothing",
      "quotes_count": 6,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing_978-18-4467-897-6.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing"
    },
    {
      "title": "Living in the End Times",
      "slug": "living-in-the-end-times",
      "quotes_count": 2,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso/slavoj-zizek/living-in-the-end-times_978-17-8663-080-3.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/living-in-the-end-times"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Plague of Fantasies",
      "slug": "the-plague-of-fantasies",
      "quotes_count": 1,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso/slavoj-zizek/the-plague-of-fantasies_978-18-4467-303-2.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-plague-of-fantasies"
    },
    {
      "title": "The Sublime Object of Ideology",
      "slug": "the-sublime-object-of-ideology",
      "quotes_count": 21,
      "cover": "https://quivercdn.com/covers/verso/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology_978-18-4467-300-1.jpg",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/the-sublime-object-of-ideology"
    }
  ],
  "recent_quotes": [
    {
      "id": "ed6569d8-3413-4e46-9ef3-3eaf61f3e9f7",
      "slug": "the-horror-of-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing/the-horror-of-the",
      "text": "The horror of the Holocaust cannot be represented; but this excess of represented content over its aesthetic representation has to infect the aesthetic form itself. What cannot be described should be inscribed into the artistic form as its uncanny distortion.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 25,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "art",
          "slug": "art",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/art"
        },
        {
          "name": "Holocaust",
          "slug": "holocaust",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/holocaust"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Less_Than_Nothing_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "d813dea7-c604-4740-a3d6-325587f7f007",
      "slug": "it-is-more",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/living-in-the-end-times/it-is-more",
      "text": "“It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more successful than ourselves”",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "sacrifice",
          "slug": "sacrifice",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/sacrifice"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Living_in_the_End_Times_(2010)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "c1cbbad4-cf75-41eb-92da-42cba47c5014",
      "slug": "the-protracted-struggle",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing/the-protracted-struggle",
      "text": "The protracted struggle which dragged on in Egypt was not a conflict of visions, but the conflict between a vision of freedom, the \"eternal\" Platonic Idea of Freedom, and a blind clinging to power ready to use all means possible—terror, food deprivation, exhaustion, bribery—to crush the will to freedom.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 35,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "power",
          "slug": "power",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/power"
        },
        {
          "name": "freedom",
          "slug": "freedom",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Less_Than_Nothing_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "bd853625-7955-4a47-8e4f-4b262ede246a",
      "slug": "tyranny-becomes-superfluous",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing/tyranny-becomes-superfluous",
      "text": "[Tyranny] becomes superfluous when people no longer need the external force of the tyrant to make them renounce their particular interests, but when they become \"universal citizens\" by directly identifying the core of their being with this universality - in short, people no longer need the external master when they are educated into doing the job of discipline and subordination themselves.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 198,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "tyranny",
          "slug": "tyranny",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/tyranny"
        },
        {
          "name": "obedience",
          "slug": "obedience",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/obedience"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Less_Than_Nothing_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "bb7c3c30-9c96-4713-b6dd-e897af795728",
      "slug": "in-this-precise",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing/in-this-precise",
      "text": "In this precise sense, Kant was \"the inventor of the philosophical history of philosophy\": there are necessary stages in the development of philosophy, that is, one cannot directly get at the truth, one cannot begin wit it, philosophy necessarily began with metaphysical illusions. The path from illusion to its critical denunciation is the very core of philosophy, which means that successful (\"true\") philosophy is no longer defined by its truthful explanation of the totality of being, but by successfully accounting for the illusions, that is, by explaining not only why illusions are illusions, but also why they are structurally necessary, unavoidable, and not just accidents.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 10,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "philosophy",
          "slug": "philosophy",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Less_Than_Nothing_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "9c133675-71f2-4933-9fe9-8121c142c009",
      "slug": "the-medium-here",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing/the-medium-here",
      "text": "The medium here is not the message, quite the opposite: the very medium that we use—the universal intersubjectivity of language—undermines the message.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 25,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "language",
          "slug": "language",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/language"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Less_Than_Nothing_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "22541f27-3b48-4153-ba18-5e376b36f573",
      "slug": "if-the-west",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/less-than-nothing/if-the-west",
      "text": "If the West has its military-industrial complex, we in the ex-Yugoslavia had a poetic-military complex: the post-Yugoslav was was triggered by a mixture of poetic and military components.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 31,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "war",
          "slug": "war",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/war"
        },
        {
          "name": "poetry",
          "slug": "poetry",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/poetry"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Less_Than_Nothing_(2012)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:20"
    },
    {
      "id": "f6859cdf-951e-417d-b0a9-4ff21f7a0574",
      "slug": "the-contemporary-era",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce/the-contemporary-era",
      "text": "The contemporary era constantly proclaims itself as post-ideological, but this denial of ideology only provides the ultimate proof that we are more than ever embedded in ideology. Ideology is always a field of struggle - among other things, the struggle for appropriating past traditions.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "ideology",
          "slug": "ideology",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ideology"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#First_as_Tragedy,_Then_as_Farce_(2009)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:19"
    },
    {
      "id": "b8794dc7-0bf0-4482-a613-94f9e980fc6a",
      "slug": "on-the-information",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce/on-the-information",
      "text": "On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: 'Dear guest! To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200.' The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "humor",
          "slug": "humor",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#First_as_Tragedy,_Then_as_Farce_(2009)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:19"
    },
    {
      "id": "a1d9c551-87ff-489a-9e26-d5b4674436db",
      "slug": "although-the-ruling",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce/although-the-ruling",
      "text": "Although the \"ruling class\"disagrees with the populists' moral agenda it tolerates the \"moral war\"as a means of keeping the lower classes in check, that is, it enables the latter to articulate their fury without disturbing the economic status quo.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "politics",
          "slug": "politics",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/politics"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#First_as_Tragedy,_Then_as_Farce_(2009)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:19"
    },
    {
      "id": "805e1c8f-0b0e-47ad-afd7-aa9fbf43e609",
      "slug": "there-is-never",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/in-defense-of-lost-causes/there-is-never",
      "text": "...there is never a \"right moment\" for the revolutionary act - the act is always, by definition, \"premature\".",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "revolution",
          "slug": "revolution",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/revolution"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#In_Defense_of_Lost_Causes_(2008)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:19"
    },
    {
      "id": "30cead52-c08a-4dab-a0fa-52b0a7e1b225",
      "slug": "there-should-be-no-compromise",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/slavoj-zizek/living-in-the-end-times/there-should-be-no-compromise",
      "text": "There should be no compromise here: anti-Semitism is not just one-among ideologies; it is ideology as such kat'exohen. It embodies the zero-level (or the purest form) of ideology, providing its elementary coordinates: social antagonist (\"class struggle\") is mystified and displaced so that its cause is projected onto the external intruder.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": null,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "ideology",
          "slug": "ideology",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ideology"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Slavoj_%C5%BDi%C5%BEek#Living_in_the_End_Times_(2010)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:50:19"
    }
  ]
}
