Byung-Chul Han

"Violence and freedom are the two endpoints on the scale of power."

"The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'"

"Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion."

"A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement."

"Often what is absent has more power than what is present."

"When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence."

"Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time."

"Architecture is a way for power to achieve eloquence through form."

"Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence."

"Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent."

"An absolute power would be one that never becomes apparent, never pointed to itself, one that rather blended completely into what goes without saying. Power shines in its own absence."

"Power turns pure being into a having."

"Violence may capture space, but it does not create space."

"Power tends to reduce openness... Power tries to solidify and stabilize its position by eradicating spaces open to play, or incalculable spaces."

"An ethos of freedom stops power from solidifying into domination and makes sure it remains an open game."

"Perhaps power is never free from a feeling of lack."

"If life is deprived of any meaningful closure, it will be ended in non-time."

"God functions like a stabilizer of time."

"A farewell does not dilute the presence of the past; it may make an even deeper presence."

"If things are deprived of memory, they become information or commodities. They are pushed into a time-free, ahistorical place."

"Promising, committment, and fidelity, for instance, are genuinely temporal practices."

"The haste of day rules over the night as empty form."

"Full of gods means full of meaning, full of narration. The world becomes readable, like a picture."

"Historical time knows no lasting present."

"Information has no scent."

"Time begins to emit a scent when it gains duration; when it is given a narrative or deep tension; when it gains depth and breadth, even space."

"Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society [Leistungsgesellshaft]."

"Disciplinary society is still governed by no. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers."

"However, the disappearance of domination does not entail freedom. Instead, it makes freedom and constraint coincide. Thus, the achievement-subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom--that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation."

"Depression is a narcissistic malady."

"Eros and depression are opposites."

"Eros, erotic desire, conquers depression. It delivers us from the inferno of the same to the utopia, indeed utopia, of the wholly other."

"Catastrophic fatality abruptly switches over into salvation."

"Eros conquers depression."

"Whatever is merely positive is lifeless. Negativity is essential to vitality."

"Happiness is the proof that time can accommodate eternity."

"What is obscene about pornography is not an excess of sex, but the fact that it contains no sex at all."

"The pornographic face says nothing. It has no expressivity or mystery."

"The erotic is never free of secrecy."

"Pornography completes the deritualization of love."

"The inner music of things sounds only when you close your eyes."

"Money, as a matter of principle, makes everything the same."

"The eros-driven soul produces beautiful things, and, above all, beautiful actions, which have a universal value."

"There is no such thing as data-driven thinking."

"Thinking is an expedition into quietness."

"Logos is powerless without the force of eros."

"Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails."

"We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transforming being at home to being in the world. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space. They render time habitable."

"Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things."

"Rituals are also symbolic practices... in the sense that they bring people together to create an alliance, a wholeness, a community.""