Quotes from Régis Debray

We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing a mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play.

The man of the future will be young or he will not be.

the redeeming Cross was stained with blood. Not that of the missionaries. Only that of indigenous peoples.

Le macchine, al presente, sono come la politica di una volta. Non ci si può occupare di loro, ma sono loro che si occupano di voi.

The revolution revolutionizes the counter revolution

Conséquence : il y avait, en 1919, une civilisation européenne, avec pour variante une culture américaine. Il y a, en 2017, une civilisation américaine, dont les cultures européennes semblent, avec toute leur diversité, au mieux, des variables d'ajustement, au pire, des réserves indigènes.

God, a born extremist, is the diplomat's worst enemy. Quite apart from the fact that His decrees are irrevocable, the Absolute will not allow anyone to relativize matters.

Books were the sustenance of God. And His munitions.

We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing a mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play.

religion is no longer the opium of the people but the vitamin pills of the feeble.

Difference is not the opposite of harmony but its condition.

Truly, more than removing the partition between vectors and values, we would have needed to talk about strengthening crisscrossed lacings: an intertwined kind of understanding that would de-ideologize 'ideologies,' desanctify sanctities, but also mentalize the material bases of systems of inscription, and psychoanalyze not souls but tools. That is, in one and the same gesture, make our mnemo-technic equipment intelligible as mentality and our mental equipment intelligible as technology.

gouverner l esprit des autres, et non faire le salut de son âme, ni rechercher le vrai ou le beau.

Nous ne savons plus si les médecins ne provoquent pas la mort au lieu de nous protéger. Si ce que nous avons dans notre assiette va nous alimenter ou nous intoxiquer. D ou une évidente crise de confiance - envers des technologies que nous tendons a désinvestir après avoir mis trop d espoir en elles, ajoutant ainsi la techno-frustration au déboussolement moral.

C est quand notre milieu (naturel ou culturel) commence a nous faire du mal qu on s avise de son existence, et plus il nous decouvrira ses fragilites, plus nous y aurons mal. Ainsi decouvre-t-on sa langue quand, a l etranger, on ne peut plus la parler - ou qu on avait une patrie, quand on est exile.

There is something of the ghoul in the page-swallower and of the novel-reader in the stroller through cemeteries.

Homo innove par ce qu il stocke.

Ni fetichiser ni stigmatiser: remplacer Versus par Verso.

The prime role of a leader is to offer an example of courage and sacrifice.