Jean-Pierre Van Rossem

"No, but i do note that every minute of your life the state is around the corner, you only get into your car, you have to put on your seatbelt, decree of the state, you can only drive 120 km per hour, decree of the state, but you can pay 33% VAT, at the petrol pump you can pay 80% to the state, on every cigarette you have again state, I smoke 7 packs a day so I maintain the state."

"The time is not far off when a complete Herge page will cost 10 or 20 million francs."

"The fact is that the implementation of the Truman doctrine elevated the United States, in a first phase, during the Cold War, to the police of Western Europe, in a second phase, after the Fall of the Wall, to the police of the whole world, - a police escaping any parliamentary control. So is this the global power that George W. Bush and his think tanks were so proud of?"

"Launching the Marshall Plan was certainly not as philanthropic as it was presented. The reconstruction aid was first and foremost inspired by the fear that without it, another war with the Soviet bloc would be inevitable. Moreover, the Americans knew only too well that in Western Europe the reconversion from a war economy to a normal economy was still in full swing, so Europe did have to import massively from the United States, which of course greatly benefited the US trade balance."

"How many times did we hear statements along the lines of: "Scientific research showed that ..." or "It has been scientifically proven that ..." In doing so, people assume that science is always true. But how reliable is science? A lot of what we call science, and we accept as true, is neither true nor false, and belongs to metaphysics. For a short time (following the publication of Wittgenstein's Tractatus), it looked like we could make a razor-sharp distinction between reliable scientific statements and unreliable metaphysical statements. But Wittgenstein himself challenged that distinction with the posthumous publication of his Philosophical Investigations. Still later, (predominantly French) postmodern philosophy picked up the proposition that there is less truth contained in general science than in a simple literary poem. The days of reliable general theories seemed hopelessly over. Is that so? Has cognitive thinking become impossible? The following is a reflection. The era we live in, at least in the Western world, is called postmodernity. It is characterised by great uncertainty and a sense of increasing insecurity. Uncertainty surrounds unanswered questions related to the future of the planet, to the sustainability of energy supplies, to job security, to family stability, to declining social control, to the increase in the number of asylum seekers, to the existence of a god, and so on. Insecurity is linked to war, to terrorism, to crime. The idea is to study all these phenomena scientifically. But how sure am I that science is still reliable?"

"The higher the degree of postmodernity, the more citizens have to lose and the greater the uncertainty regarding their future (will I still be able to pay off my mortgage tomorrow, pay my rent, will my wife or husband not run off with someone else, will I still get a decent pension, will I still give my children and grandchildren an ecologically liveable world). Also, the greater the degree of postmodernity the greater the spending on the military, police and judiciary to fight crime, terrorism, or war)."

"Postmodernity is a way of life that has spread throughout post-industrial western society in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia at least since 1980. It is characterised by families getting smaller and smaller, by a sharp rise in divorce rates and fewer marriages, by more and more out-of-wedlock births, by a meteoric rise in computer and internet use, by a sharp rise in drug use, by more and more time spent on gaming, by a false sense of increasing freedom, by a rise in wealth, and so on."

"Postmodernity is, for the time being, the most recent form of society to manifest itself at the time of the anomic technical division of labour. It is the successor to modernity which was itself the successor to traditional society. Postmodernity should not be confused with postmodernism, which was a period code in art, also a (sad) way of philosophical thinking that spread mainly between 1970 and 1995 in France - an idiotic way of thinking that suggested that in science, general theories are no longer possible and that there is more cognitive truth hidden in a poem than in the complete Standard Model of Physics. Postmodern philosophy, viewed with some recul, has been a feat of pompous nonsense, if only because it denied that in human science general theories are impossible, as if the seminal work of Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann had no cognitive significance."

"Under the influence of Marxism, a sixth form of division of labour also emerged in world history, the nomic technical division of labour. It was first introduced in the Soviet Union in 1917 and disappeared with the fall of the Wall in 1989. Working people were led to believe that it was a form of nomic division of labour that had arisen spontaneously and was not enforced by the government. But in reality, it was not communism; on the contrary, it was state capitalism. On paper, communism still prevails in the People's Republic of China, but only because paper is very willing there (no wonder, since paper was invented in China precisely). Hard forms of communism continued for a short time after the Fall of the Wall in Cuba and Albania, but have since disappeared there too. Only in totally isolated North Korea has the nomic technical division of labour persisted to this day. It certainly did not lead to a death of the state, as Marx predicted, but to a crushing state apparatus controlled by the unscrupulous power clique around the revered Leader."

"I have been driving 300 kilometres per hour all my life and now I meet an accident at 30 per hour. Surely that is godawful."

"I smoke a lot, yes. The proverbial Turk could take a punt on it. Et alors? I am not afraid of dying. If I have to, I have to."

"Vive la république d’Europe!"

"I have been an asshole, but an interesting one. I have made horrendous mistakes and made wrong decisions."

"I am still in debt to the taxman. A little. 17.5 billion."

"I did the math once: I must have smoked about 3.8 million cigarettes in my lifetime. I easily smoked eight packs a day, one cigarette after another. That's more than two hundred cigarettes a day."

"I know that in my life I have bought 128 or 138 Ferraris, a lot of paintings, 7 castles I have never seen, 2 planes and an $89 million yacht."

"I am no longer afraid of death. A longing for death even arises. Still, I would like to be able to say before the end of the year: enough is enough."

"If a woman showing her ass and tits is already a Public Figure, it has come a long way."

"I want to talk about it with people who know something about it. You are politicians, you know nothing."

"I did learn in the meantime that there are two categories of people: those who are for me and those who are against me. I don't think there is a middle species."

"I always start from a truth that I dress up and sugarcoat. For example, if I've been to a restaurant and it was quite expensive, I say, 'The four of us went for dinner and we consumed a hundred thousand francs.'"

"When the taxman had taxed everything, I was forced to drive a Rolls. It was terrible. Such a raggedy car that broke down every five minutes. I could barely manage 200 kilometres per hour with it. I eventually sold it, because I would rather walk than drive that Rolls."

"I regret everything. But if I had done things differently, it would never have been as compelling."