Jacques Lacan Quotes

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming. ~ Jacques Lacan

The knowledge that there is a part of the psychic functions that are out of conscious reach, we did not need to wait for Freud to know this! ~ Jacques Lacan

It is only true inasmuch as it is truly followed. ~ Jacques Lacan

The sufferings of neurosis and psychosis are for us a schooling in the passions of the soul, just as the beam of the psychoanalytic scales, when we calculate the tilt of its threat to entire communities, provides us with an indication of the deadening of the passions in society. ~ Jacques Lacan

In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth. ~ Jacques Lacan

For the signifier is a unit in its very uniqueness, being by nature symbol only of an absence. ~ Jacques Lacan

The evil eye is the fascinum, it is that which has the effect of arresting movement and, literally, of killing life. At the moment the subject stops, suspending his gesture, he is mortified. This anti-life, anti-movement function of the terminal point is the fascinum, and it is precisely one of the dimensions in which the power of the gaze is exercised directly. ~ Jacques Lacan

Writings scatter to the winds blank checks in an insane charge. And were they not such flying leaves, there would be no purloined letters. ~ Jacques Lacan

Psychoanalysis is a terribly efficient instrument, and because it is more and more a prestigious instrument, we run the risk of using it with a purpose for which it was not made for, and in this way we may degrade it. ~ Jacques Lacan

I speak without knowing it. I speak with my body and I do so unbeknownst to myself. Thus I always say more than I know.

This is where I arrive at the meaning of the word "subject" in analytic discourse. What speaks without knowing it makes me "I," subject of the verb. That doesn't suffice to bring me into being. That has nothing to do with what I am forced to put in - enough knowledge for it to hold up, but not one drop more. ~ Jacques Lacan

From an analytic point of view, the only thing one can be guilty of is having given ground relative to one's desire (Seminar 7, 319) ~ Jacques Lacan

That the Sadian fantasy situates itself better in the bearers of Christian ethics than elsewhere is what our structural landmarks allow us to grasp easily. But that Sade, himself, refuses to be my neighbor, is what needs to be recalled, not in order to refuse it to him in return, but in order to recognize the meaning of this refusal. We believe that Sade is not close enough to his own wickedness to recognize his neighbor in it. A trait which he shares with many, and notably with Freud. For such is indeed the sole motive of the recoil of beings, sometimes forewarned, before the Christian commandment. For Sade, we see the test of this, crucial in our eyes, in his refusal of the death penalty, which history, if not logic, would suffice to show is one of the corollaries of Charity. ~ Jacques Lacan

Reading in no way obliges us to understand. ~ Jacques Lacan

Even if what a jealous husband claims about his wife (that she sleeps around with other men) is all true, his jealousy is still pathological. ~ Jacques Lacan

A certificate tells me that I was born. I repudiate this certificate: I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject. ~ ― Jacques Lacan, The Seminar Of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental Concepts Of Psychoanalysis

I love you, but, because inexplicably I love in you something more than you - the object petit a - I mutilate you. ~ Jacques Lacan

When one loves, it has nothing to do with sex. ~ Jacques Lacan

All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors. ~ Jacques Lacan

I am there where it is spoken that the universe is a defect in the purity of non-being. ~ Jacques Lacan

If psychoanalysis clarifies some facts of sexuality, it is not by aiming at them in their own reality, not in biological experience. ~ Jacques Lacan

But this emphasis would be lavished in vain, if it served, in your opinion, only to abstract a general type from phenomena whose particularity in our work would remain the essential thing for you, and whose original arrangement could be broken up only artificially. ~ Jacques Lacan

I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real. ~ Jacques Lacan

As is known, it is in the realm of experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we may grasp along what imaginary lines the human organism, in the most intimate recesses of its being, manifests its capture in a symbolic dimension. ~ Jacques Lacan

Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it. ~ Jacques Lacan

Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless. ~ Jacques Lacan

It is only through the radical defile of speech that we fall into the illusion that language is a register of conscious construction ~ Lacan Jacques

The golden age of cultural theory is long past. The pioneering works of Jacques Lacan, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault are several decades behind us [ … ] Some of them have since been struck down. Fate pushed Roland Barthes under a Parisian laundry van, and afflicted Michel Foucault with Aids. It dispatched Lacan, Williams and Bourdieu, and banished Louis Althusser to a psychiatric hospital for the murder of his wife. It seemed that God was not a structuralist. ~ Terry Eagleton

What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?
~ Jacques Lacan

Which is why we cannot say of the purloined letter that, like other objects, it must be or not be in a particular place but that unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes. ~ Jacques Lacan

The madman is not only a beggar who thinks he is a king, but also a king who thinks he is a king. ~ Jacques Lacan

Yet, analytical truth is not as mysterious, or as secret, so as to not allow us to see that people with a talent for directing consciences see truth rise spontaneously. ~ Jacques Lacan

Anxiety, as we know, is always connected with a loss ... with a two-sided relation on the point of fading away to be superseded by something else, something which the patient cannot face without vertigo ~ Jacques Lacan

The sentence completes its signification only with its last term. ~ Jacques Lacan

My thesis is that the moral law is articulated with relation to the real as such, to the real insofar as it can be the guarantee of the Thing. ~ Jacques Lacan

Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn't even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack. ~ Jacques Lacan

The narration, in fact, doubles the drama with a commentary without which no mise en scene would be possible. ~ Jacques Lacan

The time for comprehending can be reduced to the instant of the glance, but this glance can include in its instant all the time needed for comprehending. ~ Jacques Lacan

Aside from that reservation, a fictive tale even has the advantage of manifesting symbolic necessity more purely to the extent that we may believe its conception arbitrary. ~ Jacques Lacan

I am where I think not. ~ Jacques Lacan

The hand that extends toward the fruit, the rose, or the log that suddenly bursts into flames – its gesture of reaching, drawing close, or stirring up is closely related to the ripening of the fruit, the beauty of the flower, and the blazing of the log. If, in the movement of reaching, drawing, or stirring, the hand goes far enough toward the object that another hand comes out of the fruit, flower, or log and extends toward your hand – and at that moment your hand freezes in the closed plenitude of the fruit, in the open plenitude of the flower, or in the explosion of a log which bursts into flames – then what is produced is love. ~ Jacques Lacan

The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire. ~ Jacques Lacan

What could be more convincing, moreover, than the gesture of laying one's cards face up on the table? ~ Jacques Lacan

We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent in man, however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him, split as it is in its submission to symbols. ~ Jacques Lacan

In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness
a color, a weight, a texture
that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions. ~ Jacques Barzun

Isolated and limited vision problem. ~ Jacques Chirac

I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The poet ... is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs ... the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds. ~ Jacques Derrida

She hoped to understand the feelings that had sprouted and continued to grow inside her human shell. The unquenchable desire for companionship. The irrational fear of uncertainty. The constant, gnawing need for more. ~ Hillary Jacques

When you're a kid and your father is an engineer, he goes to the office. I saw my father get up and go to the office in the house and write. But I don't see any similarities. ~ Jacques Audiard

We are all bundles of wild and warrantless convictions, especially about one another, and when one gets an accidental glimpse of someone else's candid mind, the sight is dread-inspiring. For his cozy chamber of horrors - and particularly his facts - are owned and enjoyed in complete faith. ~ Jacques Barzun

Everything is in place to have a peaceful Games. ~ Jacques Rogge

If you look at American studios, the big productions have nothing to do with reality. ~ Jacques Audiard

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn. ~ Jacques Barzun

Thus society is born, as something required by nature, and (because this nature is human nature) as something accomplished through a work of reason and will, and freely consented to. Man is a political animal, which means that the human person craves political life, communal life, not only with regard to the family community, but with regard to the civil community. ~ Jacques Maritain

If they are not an advanced race from the future, are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, another dimension where there are other human races living, and where we may go at our expense, never to return to the present? From that mysterious universe, are higher beings projecting objects that can materialize and dematerialize at will? Are UFOS "windows" rather than "objects"? ~ Jacques Vallee

He does seem rather taken with you," Jacques said, almost sending Ignatius off bleating with laughter. The man sounded quite perplexed and put out that the horseman had chosen another over him.
"The same could be said of you," Ignatius reminded him, thinking of a forced seduction by chicken. ~ Sharon Maria Bidwell

Her body clenched with hot desire, and without thinking she bathed Jacques' mind in her heat. She saw his body hunch, as if someone had physically punched him. Guilt stirred for a moment, but then he was stroking her throat, his mental touch every bit as exciting in her state of arousal as his physical one.
Gregori straightened up slowly and inhaled sharply, turned to glare at Jacques. ~ Christine Feehan

Being wealthy isn't just a question of having lots of money. It's a question of what we want. Wealth isn't an absolute, it's relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can't afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If y'can't see with yore own two eyes what's in front of them, then y'better off closin' 'em an' goin' t'sleep, 'tis far more restful!
- Gerul ~ Brian Jacques

One can buy anything with money except morality. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Everyone has been taught that technique is an application of science ... This traditional view is radically false. It takes into account only a single category of science and only a short period of time ~ Jacques Ellul

We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities. ~ Jacques Maritain

I open the books on Right and on ethics; I listen to the professors and jurists; and, my mind full of their seductive doctrines, I admire the peace and justice established by the civil order; I bless the wisdom of our political institutions and, knowing myself a citizen, cease to lament I am a man. Thoroughly instructed as to my duties and my happiness, I close the book, step out of the lecture room, and look around me. I see wretched nations groaning beneath a yoke of iron. I see mankind ground down by a handful of oppressors, I see a famished mob, worn down by sufferings and famine, while the rich drink the blood and tears of their victims at their ease. I see on every side the strong armed with the terrible powers of the Law against the weak.

And all this is done quietly and without resistance. It is the peace of Ulysses and his comrades, imprisoned in the cave of the Cyclops and waiting their turn to be devoured. We must groan and be silent. Let us for ever draw a veil over sights so terrible. I lift my eyes and look to the horizon. I see fire and flame, the fields laid waste, the towns put to sack. Monsters! where are you dragging the hapless wretches? I hear a hideous noise. What a tumult and what cries! I draw near; before me lies a scene of murder, ten thousand slaughtered, the dead piled in heaps, the dying trampled under foot by horses, on every side the image of death and the throes of death. And that is the fruit of your peaceful institutions! Indignat ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Even today a good many distinguished minds seem unable to accept or even to understand that from a source of noise natural selection alone and unaided could have drawn all the music of the biosphere. In effect natural selection operates upon the products of chance and can feed nowhere else; but it operates in a domain of very demanding conditions, and from this domain chance is barred. It is not to chance but to these conditions that evolution owes its generally progressive course, its successive conquests, and the impression it gives of a smooth and steady unfolding. ~ Jacques Monod

Under water, man becomes an archangel. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The lie is the future, one may venture to say [ ... ]. To tell the truth is, on the contrary, to say what is or what will have been and it would instead prefer the past. ~ Jacques Derrida

Shea! The call was loud, a flood of fear and confusion, an impression of strangling, of darkness and pain.
I'm here, Jacques.
Come back to me. I need you.
She smiled at the demand in his voice; her heart somersaulted at the raw truth in his voice. He never tried to hide anything from her, not even his elemental fear of her leaving him to face the darkness alone. Spoiled brat. She sent it tenderly. There's no need to sound like the lord of the manor. I'll be right in.
Just come to me. He was more relaxed now, beating back his fear of isolation. I do not want to wake alone. ~ Christine Feehan

Our Father which art in heaven - Stay there - And we will stay on earth - Which is sometimes so pretty. ~ Jacques Prevert

To study men, we must look close by; to study man, we must learn to look afar; if we are to discover essential characteristics, we must first observe differences. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is easier to conquer than to administer. With enough leverage, a finger could overturn the world; but to support the world, one must have the shoulders of Hercules. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism , in a certain spirit of Marxism . ~ Jacques Derrida

When I am back in old Blighty, I am surrounded by the old and familiar concerns: New Labour, Europe, the Middle East and the rest. If you live in Britain, you will know what I mean - except you won't, because you will take it for granted that this is what the world is all about. ~ Martin Jacques

Fate chooses your relations,
you choose your friends. ~ Jacques Delille

One of the unique features of China is that, notwithstanding the fact that it has a population of 1.3 billion, around 92% regard themselves as Han Chinese. This is quite different from the world's other most populous countries, such as India, the U.S. and Indonesia, which are ethnically diverse. ~ Martin Jacques