"The public sphere, once a forum for rational-critical debate, has been transformed into a court before which public relations displays its wares. The public is no longer a partner in dialogue, but an audience to be manipulated." (p. 162)
Pour qu'un vaniteux desire un objet il suffit de le convaincre que cet objet est deja desire par un tiers aquel s'attache un certain prestige. La mediateur est ici un rival que la vanite a d'abord suscite qu'elle a pour ainsi dire, appele a son existence de rival avant d'en exiger la defaite. p.20-21
Not only must the thought emerge out of the creative moment of decision in some given individual, but as a thought that pertains to life itself it must also be a historical decision -- a crisis. p.154 continued p. 155 This plan culminates in a fifth point entitled "The doctrine of eternal return as hammer in the hand of the most powerful man. Wherever the thought of thoughts is indeed thought, that is to say, is incorporated, it conducts the thinker to supreme decisions in such a way that he expands beyond himself, thus attaining power over himself and willing himself. In this way such a man is as will to power.
Political institutions, no matter how well or how badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action. p.153
In truth history does not belong to us, we belong to it.
"The symbol gives rise to thought."
"The human being is a mediation between the finite and the infinite; he is this mediation because he is a disproportion."
The space of appearance comes into being wherever men are together in the manner of speech and action, and therefore predates and precedes all formal constitution of the public realm and the various forms of government, that is, the various forms in which the public realm can be organized. p.199
