Language is not made to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience newspapers, news, proceed by redundancy, in that they tell us what we βmustβ think, retain, expect, etc. language is neither informational nor communicational. It is not the communication of information but something quite different: the transmission of order-words, either from one statement to another or within each statement, insofar as each statement accomplishes an act and the act is accomplished in the statement
The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that our inner thoughts and aspects of ourselves can be elusive and difficult to grasp, much like a shadow.
Gilles Deleuze's quote reflects on the nature of the self and the unconscious. The imagery of a shadow escaping like a sheltered animal implies that parts of ourselves, especially those that are hidden or suppressed, can no longer be contained and will eventually break free. This notion resonates with the idea that our identity and subconscious desires are complex and often evade our understanding, mirroring the struggles of self-discovery and acceptance.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about self-awareness, this quote can illustrate the difficulties we face in understanding ourselves.
More from Gilles Deleuze
All quotes βSomething in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.
Intuition is neither a feeling, an inspiration nor a disorderly sympathy but a fully developed method.
Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object.
Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political.
Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all.
Similar quotes
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.
Drag is a chicken suit, and you're very emboldened. Whatever you do or say or fail at or succeed at is attributed to your costume and not you as a person. So there's a lot of freedom.
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
Nothing is more useless in developing a nation's economy than a gun, and nothing blocks the road to social development more than the financial burden of war. War is the arch enemy of national progress and the modern scourge of civilized man.
USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.