In Praise of Love Quotes

“Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“We could say that love is a tenacious adventure. The adventurous side is necessary, but equally so is the need for tenacity. To give up at the first hurdle, the first quarrel, is only to distort love. Real love is one that triumphs lastingly, sometimes painfully, over the hurdles erected by time, space and the world.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“I think… that love encompasses the experience of the possible transition from the pure randomness of chance to a state that has universal value. Starting out from something that is simply an
encounter, a trifle, you learn that you can experience the world on the basis of difference and not only in terms of identity. And you can even be tested and suffer in the process. In today’s world, it is generally thought that individuals only pursue their own self-interest. Love is an antidote to that. Provided it isn’t conceived only as an exchange of mutual favours, or isn’t calculated way in advance as a profitable investment, love really is a unique trust placed in chance. It takes us into key areas of the experience of what is difference and, essentially, leads to the idea that you can experience the world from the perspective of difference. In this respect it has universal implications: it is an individual experience of potential universality, and is thus central to philosophy, as Plato was the first to intuit.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“إن إعلان الحب هو الانتقال من الصدفة إلى القدر، ولهذا هو محفوف بالخطر ومشحون بنوع من رهبة خشبة المسرح المرعب.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“Christianity grasped perfectly that there is an element in the apparent contingency of love that can’t be reduced to that contingency. But it immediately raised it to the level of transcendence, and that is the root of the problem. This universal element I too recognize in love as immanent. But Christianity has somehow managed to elevate it and refocus it onto a transcendent power. It’s an ideal that was already partly present in Plato, through the idea of the Good. It is a brilliant first manipulation of the power of love and one we must now bring back to earth. I mean we must demonstrate that love really does have universal power, but that it is simply the opportunity we are given to enjoy a positive, creative, affirmative experience of difference. The Other, no doubt, but without the “Almighty-Other”, without the “Great Other” of transcendence.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“In love the individual goes beyond himself, beyond the narcissistic. In sex, you are really in a relationship with yourself via the mediation of the other. The other helps you to discover the reality of pleasure. In love, on the contrary, the mediation of the other is enough in itself.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“The absolute contingency of the encounter with someone I didn’t know finally takes on the appearance of destiny. The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny, and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“So love remains powerful, subjectively
powerful: one of those rare experiences where,
on the basis of chance inscribed in a moment,
you attempt a declaration of eternity.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“A truth is not something that is constructed in a garden of roses.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“the fact that she and I are now incorporated into this unique subject, the subject of love that views the panorama of the world through the prism of our difference”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“The world is full of new developments and love must also be something that innovates. Risk and adventure must be re-invented against safety and comfort.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“To love is to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence. This world where I see for myself the fount of happiness my being with someone else brings. "I love you" becomes: in this world where there is the fount you are for my life. In the water from this fount, I see our bliss, yours first.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“Zero deaths” war, “zero risks” love, nothing random, no chance encounters. Backed as it is, with all the resources of a wide-scale advertising campaign, I see it as the first threat to love, what I would call the safety threat. After all, it’s not so very different to an arranged marriage. Not done in the name of family order and hierarchy by despotic parents, but in the name of safety for the individuals involved, through advance agreements that avoid randomness, chance encounters and in the end any existential poetry, due to the categorical absence of risks.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“وحده الفن يستعيد بُعد المعاني للقاء، للثورة، للتمرد. إن الفن في كل أشكاله هو تأمل عظيم للحدث كما هو. إن اللوحة العظيمة هي القبض على شيء ما لا يمكن اختصاره إلى ماتعرضه بأسلوبها.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“While desire focuses on the other, always in a somewhat fetishist manner, on a particular object, like breasts, buttocks and cock...love focuses on the very being of the other, on the other as it has erupted, fully armed with its being, into my life thus disrupted and re-fashioned”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“El amor es siempre la posibilidad de presenciar el nacimiento de un mundo.”
― Alain Badiou avec Nicolas Truong, Eloge de l'amour

“This is a very difficult, almost metaphysical problem: how can what is pure chance at the outset become the fulcrum for a construction of truth? How can something that was basically unpredictable and seemed tied to the unpredictable vagaries of existence nevertheless become the entire meaning of two lives that have met, paired off, that will engage in the extended experience of the constant (re)-birth of the world via the mediation of the difference in their gazes?”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love

“Bazı felsefeciler sonsuzluğun an olduğunu ileri sürmüşlerdi. Daha Yunan düşüncesinde bile bu anlayışa rastlanır. Sonsuzluğun tek zamansal boyutu andır onlara göre.... Elbette, mucizevi karşılaşma anı aşkın sonsuzluğunu vaat eder. Ama ben daha az mucizevi, daha çok emek isteyen bir sonsuzluk anlayışı, demek ki nokta nokta, inatla oluşturulan zamansal sonsuzluğu, İki'nin deneyimini ileri sürmek istiyorum. Karşılaşma mucizesi diye bir şeyin var olduğunu kabul ediyorum, ama onun tek başına ele alınırsa, nokta nokta yaratılacak bir gerçekliğin, emek isteyen bir oluşuma yönlendirilmezse, gerçeküstücü bir şiirden kaynaklandığını düşünüyorum. "Emek isteyen" sözü burada olumlu anlamda anlaşılmalı. Bir aşk çalışması vardır, yalnızca mucize değil. Habire uğraşmak, uyanık olmak, hem kendiyle hem de ötekiyle birleşmek gerekir. Düşünmek, hareket etmek, değiştirmek gerekir. O halde, evet, emeğin içkin ödülü mutluluk olur.”
― Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love