Simon Critchley

“The denial of death is self-hatred.”

— Simon Critchley

“Death makes cynics of us all”

— Simon Critchley

The current situation with regard to theory is odd and maybe defined by a paradox.

— Simon Critchley

Humour is human. Why? Well, because the Philosopher, Aristotle, says so.

— Simon Critchley

It is so ridiculous to limit oneself to one version of the truth.

— Simon Critchley

It's complicated. On the one hand we're killer apes, and on the other hand we have this metaphysical longing.

— Simon Critchley

The philosopher is someone who doesn't know, but who wants to find out.

— Simon Critchley

For me, philosophy is an activity of thought that is common to human beings. Human beings at their best.

— Simon Critchley

My favourite writer is Beckett and I keep going back to wallow in his work like a deep pool of dark humour…

— Simon Critchley

Philosophy isn't programmed into us, and a lot of the forces of our culture steadfastly work against it. Philosophy, for me, is…

— Simon Critchley

Just to say "Well, God is dead" in one breath is to say, in another, that nothing means anything. This is the…

— Simon Critchley

I think that when people are at their best, when they are thinking, reflecting, cogitating, then they are doing philosophy. So I…

— Simon Critchley

Philosophy teaches us to look at the world again. It brings out at a theoretical level what all plain, common, ordinary people,…

— Simon Critchley

So, I am a b*stard, and the English are b*stards. But the really bad news is that you are too. My vision…

— Simon Critchley

Peace is nothing more than the regulation of the psycho-political economy of awe and reverential fear, of using the threat of terror…

— Simon Critchley

In relation to the question of hope, I think the only hope we have is hope against hope. We hope for a…

— Simon Critchley

If the denial of death is self-hatred, as it is to deny our freedom and live in fear of death (which is…

— Simon Critchley

In the US, what passes for Christianity - and it is, to say the least, a highly perverse, possessive individualist and capitalist…

— Simon Critchley

If I had a religious experience, what I know for sure is that I would stop doing philosophy and would start doing…

— Simon Critchley

Being anthropologically respectful of all faiths means being committed to none, and being left to drift without an anchor for one's most…

— Simon Critchley

The culture of irony is the culture of postmodernism, which I would furiously want to denounce. We have to act ethically and…

— Simon Critchley

The thing about humour is that the super-ego is also at play, so what interested me, particularly in the last chapter which…

— Simon Critchley

So yes, I'm trying to think about the connections between politics and poetry. There's an awful lot you could say here.Poetics is…

— Simon Critchley

I have argued that philosophy doesn't begin in wonder or in the fact that things are, it begins in a realization that…

— Simon Critchley

“In a seminar at New York University in 1980, Foucault is reported to have said that the difference between late antiquity and…

— Simon Critchley

There's a floating distraction in the contemporary world, life at a distance enabled by technology. I want people to commit at the…

— Simon Critchley

We live in a world that is dominated by science. And that's not a bad thing - not at all. But one…

— Simon Critchley

Melancholia for Freud is the relationship that the subject takes up with respect to itself from the position of what he calls…

— Simon Critchley

Shore up the mean with reverence and terror. But never banish terror from the gates of the state. The stronger the fear,…

— Simon Critchley

I guess what happens to a lot of people as they get older is that they get more conservative, but with me,…

— Simon Critchley

Philosophy, for me, is a way of relearning to look at the world, a world that is familiar to us, that we…

— Simon Critchley

Now, if laughter is proper to the human being, then the human being who does not laugh invites the charge of inhumanity,…

— Simon Critchley

The influence of being in New York, made me realize a lot of the ethical and political ideas I want to push…

— Simon Critchley

Philosophy for me is essentially atheistic. Now that's an anxious atheism. It's an atheism that is anxious because it inhabits questions that…

— Simon Critchley

There are lots of stories about how philosophy begins. Some people claim it begins in wonder; some people claim it begins in…

— Simon Critchley

The only answer to the question of the meaning of life has to begin from the fact of our human finitude, of…

— Simon Critchley

Any philosophical and theoretical assurance that laughter is unique to the human being becomes somewhat unsure when one turns to the anthropological…

— Simon Critchley

Also, rights are not things that are given in the heavens. Rather, they are levers for political articulations, which enables what was…

— Simon Critchley

We must believe, but we can't believe. Perhaps this is the tragedy that some of us see in Obama: a change we…

— Simon Critchley

That is to say, politics is essentially about the management of fear, an economy of fear, continually adjusting the level of fear…

— Simon Critchley