Difference and Repetition Quotes

“A tyrant institutionalises stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“The theory of thought is like painting: it needs that revolution which took art from representation to abstraction. This is the aim of a theory of thought without image.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Opening is an essential feature of univocity. The nomadic distributions or crowned anarchies in the univocal stand opposed to the sedentary distribution of analogy. Only there does the cry resound: ‘Everything is equal!’ and ‘Everything returns!’. However, this ‘Everything is equal!’ and ‘Everything returns!’ can be said only at the point in which the extremity of difference is reached. A single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for all beings: on the condition that each being, each drop, and each voice has reached the state of excess – in other words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon the mobile cusp, causes them to return.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“A single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for all beings: on condition that each being, each drop and each voice has reached the state of excess -- in other words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon its mobile cusp, causes them to return.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Identity and resemblance would then be no more than inevitable illusions - in other words, concepts of reflection which would account for our inveterate habit of thinking difference on the basis of the categories of representation.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“[The dogmatic image of thought]… presupposes codes or axioms which do not result by chance, but which do not have an intrinsic rationality either. It’s just like theology: everything about it is quite rational if you accept sin, the immaculate conception, and the incarnation. Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational — not sheltered from the irrational at all, but traversed by it and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, and drift.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Perhaps the highest object of art is to bring into play simultaneously all these repetitions, with their differences in kind and rhythm, their respective displacements and disguises, their divergences and decentrings; to embed them in one another and to envelop one or the other in illusions the 'effect' of which varies in each case.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Destiny never consists in step-by-step deterministic relations between presents which succeed one another according to the order of a represented time. Rather, it implies between successive presents non-localisable connections, actions at a distance, systems of replay, resonance and echoes, objective chances, signs, signals, and roles which transcend spatial locations and temporal successions.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“The time is coming when it will hardly be possible to write a book of philosophy as it has been done for so long: "Ah! the old style.... " The search for new means of philosophical expression was begun by Nietzsche and must be pursued today in relation to the renewal of certain other arts, such as the theater or the cinema. In this context, we can now raise the question of the utilization of the history of philosophy. It seems to us that the history of philosophy should play a role roughly analogous to that of collage in painting.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“La tâche de la vie est de faire coexister toutes les répétitions dans un espace où se distribue
la différence.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Cogito para un yo disuelto.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition

“To learn is to enter into the universal of the relations which constitute the Idea, and into their corresponding singularities. ... problematic Ideas are precisely the ultimate elements of nature and the subliminal objects of little perceptions. As a result, 'learning' always takes place in and through the unconscious, thereby establishing the bond of a profound complicity between nature and mind.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“To learn is to enter into the universal of the relations which constitute the Idea, and into their corresponding
singularities.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“What is recognised is not only an object but also the values attached to an object (values play a crucial role in the distributions undertaken by good sense). In so far as the practical finality of recognition lies in the 'established values', then on this model the whole image of thought as Cogitatio natura bears witness to a disturbing complacency.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Job is infinite contestation and Abraham infinite resignation, but these are one and the same thing. Job challenges the law in an ironic manner, refusing all second-hand explanations and dismissing the general in order to reach the most singular as principle or as universal. Abraham submits humorously to the law, but finds in that submission precisely the singularity of his only son whom the law commanded him to sacrifice. As Kierkegaard understands it, repetition is the transcendent correlate shared by the psychical intentions of contestation and resignation.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Those whom Nietzsche calls masters are certainly powerful men, but not men of power, since power is in the gift of the values of the day.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

“Por doquier la máscara, el disfraz, lo vestido, la verdad de lo desnudo. El verdadero sujeto de la repetición es la máscara. Porque la repetición difiere por naturaleza de la representación, lo repetido no puede ser representado, sino que debe ser siempre significado, enmascarado por lo que significa, enmascarando, a su vez, lo que significa.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Différence et répétition

“A single and the same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and the same ocean for all the drops, a single clamor of being for all beings: on condition that each being, each drop, and each voice has reached the state of excess - in other words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon its mobile cusp, causes them to return.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition