Jean-Francois Lyotard Quotes & Sayings

“A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before.”

“A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.”

“The ruling class is and will continue to be the class of decision makers.”

“Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.”

“What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination.”

“Even now it is no longer composed of the traditional political class, but of a composite layer of corporate leaders, high-level administrators, and the heads of the major professional, labor, political, and religious organisations.”

“What guides Marxism, then, is a different model of society, and a different conception of the function of the knowledge that can be produced by society and acquired from it.”

“Increasingly, the central question is becoming who will have access to the information these machines must have in storage to guarantee that the right decisions are made.”

“Liberalism does not preclude an organisation of the flow of money in which some channels are used in decision making while others are only good for the payment of debts.”

“Scientific knowledge is a kind of discourse.”