A Quote by Jacques Lacan

The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire. — © Jacques Lacan
The only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire.
The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous; yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers.
So I was still guilty. And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.
In Yugoslavia we were told we were not only naive idealists in wanting war criminals to be prosecuted but that we were actually standing in the way of a ceasefire which would save more lives. The idea was that, by giving amnesty to these ruthless warmongers, you would give them an incentive to stop killing. I found that incredibly naive, never mind cynical. Having been on the ground and having met with these ruthless killers, I knew the only thing they understood was the language of force.
Diderot took the ground that, if orthodox religion be true Christ was guilty of suicide. Having the power to defend himself he should have used it.
The only thing that is unqualifiedly given is the total pervasive quality; and the objection to calling it "given" is that the word suggests something to which it is given, mind or thought or consciousness or whatever, as well possibly as something that gives.
I deplore the horrible crime as child murder....no matter what the motive, love of ease, or desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent,the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed...but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which compelled her to the crime.
Celebration is not because some desire is fulfilled - because no desire is ever fulfilled. Desire as such cannot be fulfilled. Desire is only a way to avoid the present moment. Desire creates the future and takes you far away. Desire is a drug; it keeps you stoned, it does not allow you to see the reality - that which is herenow.
No one wants a president to be guilty of obstruction of justice. The only thing worse than that is a guilty president who goes without punishment.
Advice is one thing that is freely given away, but watch that you only take what is worth having.
ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting.
Now, if the Standard Oil Company were the only concern in the country guilty of the practices which have given it monopolistic power, this story never would have been written. Were it alone in these methods, public scorn would long ago have made short work of the Standard Oil Company. But it is simply the most conspicuous type of what can be done by these practices. The methods it employs with such acumen, persistency, and secrecy are employed by all sorts of business men, from corner grocers up to bankers. If exposed, they are excused on the ground that this is business.
Basically what's happening is I'm pleading guilty to possessing and having plants and not guilty to the charges of supply.
No good has ever come from feeling guilty, neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves, and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties.
The law is not known, since there is nothing in it to know. We come across it only through its action, and it acts only through its sentence and its execution. It is not distinguishable from the application. We know it only through its imprint on our heart and our flesh: we are guilty, necessarily guilty. Guilt is like the moral thread which duplicates the thread of time.
Fear is a relative thing; its effects are relative to power.
The citizens of a city are not guilty of the crimes committed in their city; but they are guilty as participants in the destiny of [humanity] as a whole and in the destiny of their city in particular; for their acts in which freedom was united with destiny have contributed to the destiny in which they participate. They are guilty, not of committing the crimes of which their group is accused, but of contributing to the destiny in which these crimes happened.
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