Jessica Zu > Jessica's Quotes

“The king that "never dies" here has been replaced by the king that always dies, and suffers death more cruelly than other mortals.”
― Ernst Kantorowicz

“The world is not a solid continent of facts sprinkled by a few lakes of uncertainties, but a vast ocean of uncertainties speckled by a few islands of calibrated and stabilized forms”
― Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

“I have sought to offer humanists a detailed analysis of a technology sufficiently magnificent and spiritual to convince them that the machines by which they are surrounded are cultural artifacts worthy of their attention and respect.”
― Bruno Latour, Aramis, or The Love of Technology

“My kingdom for a more embodied body”
― Bruno Latour

“There is no control and no all-powerful creator, either – no more ‘God’ than man – but there is care, scruple, cautiousness, attention, contemplation, hesitation and revival.”
― Bruno Latour, Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech

“Using a slogan from ANT, you have 'to follow the actors themselves', that is try to catch up with their often wild innovations in order to learn from them what the collective existence has become in their hands, which methods they have elaborated to make it fit together, which accounts best define the new associations that they have been forced to established.”
― Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory

“You who are on the inside, don’t condemn my lack of faith too quickly; you who are on the outside, don’t be too quick to mock my overcredulity; you who are indifferent, don’t be too quick to wax ironic about my perpetual hesitations.”
― Bruno Latour, Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech

“You who are on the inside, this world terrifies you because, according to you, it’s ‘without a divine master’. But don’t you see that it’s also without a human master? You who are on the outside, this call for renewal of ‘God’ horrifies you because, according to you, it would bring back the old tyranny of the divine. Don’t you see that this world is forever without a creator?”
― Bruno Latour, Rejoicing: Or the Torments of Religious Speech

“Philosophy is not in the business of explaining anything. Actual occasions explain what happened, not philosophy.”
― Bruno Latour, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE: The Latour and Harman at the LSE

“Machines are the concealed wishes of actants which have tamed forces so effectively that they no longer look like forces”
― Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France

“If, of course, to serial and redescription you add… how would I put it, punctual? …Or the key with which they maintain their subsistence. And in that sense serial redescription seems to be a very good definition for the social sciences as well as for philosophy. We accompany the task of the entities in their survival, so to speak, and their maintaining their subsistence in a very, very practical manner.”
― Bruno Latour, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE: The Latour and Harman at the LSE

“What is an organization actually, even in organization theory, even in the most classical sense in management, if not a serial redescription which starts again (and it’s true) every morning.”
― Bruno Latour, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE: The Latour and Harman at the LSE

“The social sciences are obsessed by epistemological questioning in a way that no science, no real science is. You never have a chemistry class that starts with the methodology of chemistry; you start by doing chemistry. And the problem is that since the social sciences don’t know what it is to be scientific, because they know nothing about the real sciences, they imagine that they have to be listing endless numbers of criteria and precautions before doing anything. And they usually miss precisely what is interesting in natural sciences which is [LAUGHS] a laboratory situation and the experimental protocol!”
― Bruno Latour, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE: The Latour and Harman at the LSE

“No one knows any longer whether the reintroduction of the bear in Pyrenees, kolkhozes, aerosols, the Green Revolution, the anti-smallpox vaccine, Star Wars, the Muslim religion, partridge hunting, the French Revolution, service industries, labour unions, cold fusion, Bolshevism, relativity, Slovak nationalism, commercial sailboats, and so on, are outmoded, up to date, futuristic, atemporal, nonexistent, or permanent.”
― Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern

“And here I want to interject and say that Heidegger is an absolute occasionalist and has no theory of time despite “time” being included in the title Being and Time”
― Bruno Latour, The Prince and the Wolf: Latour and Harman at the LSE: The Latour and Harman at the LSE

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Landlords took the side streets, typically not in their Saab or Audi but in their “rent collector,” some oil-leaking, rusted-out van or truck that hauled around extension cords, ladders, maybe a loaded pistol, plumbing snakes, toolboxes, a can of Mace, nail guns, and other necessities.”
― Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

“Wildland firefighters do not enjoy the cultural prestige that structural firefighters do. They do not wax their fire engines and cruise down the local parade route, lights flashing; they are not the subject of countless popular books and movies; major politicians do not honor their sacrifices on the Senate floor or from the Rose Garden; they do not have bagpipe bands, fancy equipment, enduring icons, or other signifiers of honor verifying the importance of their activity.”
― Matthew Desmond, On the Fireline: Living and Dying with Wildland Firefighters

“Democracy is fragile. You have to fight for every bit, every law, every safeguard, every institution, every story. You must know how dangerous it is to suffer even the tiniest cut. This is why I say to us all: we must hold the line.”
― Maria Ressa, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

“If you're lucky, you realize early on that each decision you make answers a question that all of us muddle through: how to build meaning in our lives. Meaning is not something you stumble across or what someone gives you; you build it through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.”
― Maria Ressa, How to Stand Up to a Dictator

“Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without all three, we have no shared reality, and democracy as we know it—and all meaningful human endeavors—are dead.”
― Maria Ressa, How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

“English has spread like an invasive weed, implanting itself in nearly every habitat. It has created a world full of people ready and able to assist English speakers, wherever they may roam. A world almost designed for the convenience of the United States.”
― Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

“At various times, inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured, and experimented on. What they haven't been, by and large, is seen.”
― Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States