Quotes from Eugene Thacker

Arguably, "solitude" is an urban word. The café is the urban equivalent of the desert cave.

Consciousness is nothing more, he writes, than "a flash of lightning between two eternities of darkness.

We Philosophers. Eager to help, trained to be ineffectual.

Signs of the Times. It is more important to be seen than to exist.

The only philosophy worth pursuing is the one that poses questions without answers. Anything less is hubris. But this can never be proved – by definition.

Prospect Park, Sunday afternoon. To feel claustrophobia even in "nature.

An argument for or against suicide? One lives, in spite of life.

A philosopher – Shestov I think – once noted that, since philosophy deals with the most difficult and important issues concerning existence, philosophers think themselves the most important people. He then notes: "A bank clerk, who is always handing money out, might just as well consider himself a millionaire.

A saying from the Desert Fathers reads: "It is frightening to die, it is even more perilous to live a long life." If only pessimism had the devotion of the ascetics.

Inexhaustible indifference.

How are you?" "Good–" "Give it time…

Things should be good, I tell myself, but they're, well, not-so-good. Nothing seems to make sense – and it should (shouldn't it?). Granted, things weren't exactly perfect before, but now they're definitely worse (…or so it seems). And this on top of the simplest of things: having to live a life.

Happiness" is the feeling you have just before something goes wrong.

Bartleby's paradox: acceptance through refusal.

Young enough to keep trying, old enough to know better.

Falling asleep. Waking up.

Happiness in other people makes me suspicious.

Happiness in myself makes me apprehensive.

Suddenly a phrase jumps out: "…I would say be very wary of anyone telling you you're suffering for a reason…" I forget the question that this was the response to.

From the austere negations of the ancient Indian materialists, to the funereal perambulations of Schopenhauer, pessimism also has its own ontological argument: existence is that beyond which nothing worse can be conceived.

The problem with contemporary philosophy is that it begins in helplessness, when it should end with it. We lack even the most rudimentary theory of "giving up.

I don't believe in saying anything unless there's something to say. As time goes on, the less I speak. Boredom, depression, equanimity.

The only thing more terrifying than the person who has nothing is the person who has everything. Things can only get worse for them. The more you have, the more you have to lose. And in the end everything must be lost. Is it better to not want anything at all? Maybe, but what about the rest of us, who have some things, which we judiciously manage, like archivists?

Pessimism's propositions have all the gravitas of a bad joke.