I like to search for class struggle in strange domains. For example, it is clear that in classical Hollywood, the couple of vampires and zombies designates class struggle. Vampires are rich, they live among us. Zombies are the poor, living dead, ugly, stupid, attacking from outside. And it's the same with cats and dogs. Cats are lazy, evil, exploitative, dogs are faithful, they work hard, so if I were to be in government, I would tax having a cat, tax it really heavy.

— Slavoj Žižek

In Kant’s description, ethical duty functions like a foreign traumatic intruder that from the outside disturbs the subject’s homeostatic balance, its unbearable pressure forcing the subject to act “beyond the pleasure principle,” ignoring the pursuit of pleasures. For Lacey, exactly the same description holds for desire, which is why enjoyment is not something that comes naturally to the subject, as a realization of her inner potential, but is the content of a traumatic superego injunction.

— Slavoj Žižek

In this way the world market is, with regard to its immanent dynamic, 'a space in which everyone has once been a productive laborer, and in which labor has everywhere begun to price itself out of the system'.

— Slavoj Žižek

I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. (...) Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are.

— Slavoj Žižek

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

— Slavoj Žižek

Liberal attitudes towards the other are characterized both by respect for otherness, openness to it, and an obsessive fear of harassment. In short, the other is welcomed insofar as its presence is not intrusive, insofar as it is not really the other. Tolerance thus coincides with its opposite. My duty to be tolerant towards the other effectively means that I should not get too close to him or her, not intrude into his space—in short, that I should respect his intolerance towards my over-proximity. This is increasingly emerging as the central human right of advanced capitalist society: the right not to be ‘harassed’, that is, to be kept at a safe distance from others.

— Slavoj Žižek

Love feels like a great misfortune, a monstrous parasite, a permanent state of emergency that ruins all small pleasures.

— Slavoj Žižek

Nowadays, you can do anything that you want—anal, oral, fisting—but you need to be wearing gloves, condoms, protection.

— Slavoj Žižek

[O]né cannot separate violence from the very existence of the state (as the apparatus of class domination): from the standpoint of the'subordinated and oppressed, the very existence of a state is a fact of violence (in the same sense in which, for example, Robespierre said, in his justification of the regicide, that one does not have to prove that the king committed any specific crimes, since the very existence of the king is a crime, an offense against the freedom of the people). In this strict sense, every violence of the oppressed against the ruling class and its state is ultimately ‘defensive’. If we do not concede this point, we voles no lens ‘normalize’ the state and accept that its violence is merely a matter of contingent excesses (to be dealt with through democratic reforms).

— Slavoj Žižek

On the 'Celestial Seasonings' green tea packet there is a short explanation of its benefits: 'Green tea is a natural source of antioxidants, which neutralize harmful molecules in the body known as free radicals. By taming free radicals, antioxidants help the body maintain its natural health.' Mutatis mutandis, is not the notion of totalitarianism one of the main ideological antioxidants, whose function throughout its career was to tame free radicals, and thus to help the social body to maintain its politico-ideological good health?

— Slavoj Žižek