A Quote by Walter Benjamin
The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the "state of emergency" in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
Related Quotes
There is no exception to this rule: "All the paths of the LORD are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant." They say there is no rule without an exception, but there is an exception to that rule.
A government which uses force to maintain its rule teaches the oppressed to use force to oppose it.
Cumulatively, American society is sliding toward a new form of 'authoritarian democracy'. Elections continue, free speech is generally protected, institutions operate in accordance with the Constitution, but the reality of state - society relations is dramatically altered by the counter-terrorist claims of emergency rule and the right of exception.
The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.
Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the State has wielded through the centuries. Once excellent weapon has been tradition. The longer that the rule of a State has been able to preserve itself, the more powerful this weapon; for then, the X Dynasty or the Y State has the seeming weight of centuries of tradition behind it.
The problem is that those of us who were born into Islam and who don't want to live according to scripture - we don't have what the Jews have, which is a rabbinical tradition that allows you to ask questions. We also don't have the church tradition that the Christians have.
The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.
When men are oppressed, it's a tragedy. When women are oppressed, it's tradition.
The Lord commands us to do good unto all men without exception, though the majority are very undeserving when judged according to their own merits. But scripture here helps us out with an excellent argument when it teaches us that we must not think of man's real value, but only of his creation in the image of God to which we owe all possible honor and love.
The same rule that teaches the propriety of a partition between the various branches of power, teaches us likewise that this partition ought to be so contrived as to render the one independent of the other.
A large-scale crisis - whether a terrorist attack or a financial crash - would likely provide the pretext to declare some sort of state of exception or emergency, where the usual rules no longer apply.
Poetry teaches us how to live in a world in which none of us belongs.
I would like to believe that most people, regardless of gender, are good and kind. The good men in my stories are the rule. It's the bad men that are the exception and because I tend toward the dark in my fiction, you see more of the exception than the rule.
When tradition is thought to state the way things really are, it becomes the director and judge of our lives; we are, in effect, imprisoned by it. On the other hand, tradition can be understood as a pointer to that which is beyond tradition: the sacred. Then it functions not as a prison but as a lens.
He does not rule us. No one can rule us. No one can rule anyone who does not first agree to the ruling." She smiled a trace at Aeriel and patted the little camp dog, which was whining for more tidbits. "One must rule oneself.
I once wrote about Don Imus that 'speech is free, but consequences are not.' I never want to be the exception to that rule, and I'm not sure any of us want to live in a world where hurtful things are hurled around without cost.
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