Best 157 quotes of Paul Virilio on MyQuotes

All future wars, all future accidents will be live wars and live accidents.

All of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it...The great stroke of luck for the military class's terrorism is that no one recognizes it. People don't recognize the militarized part of their identity, of their consciousness.

Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.

A museum of accidents is needed. This museum already exists, it's television.

Art has become more than painting, sculpture or music: art is more than Van Gogh painting a landscape or Wagner composing an opera. The whole of reality itself has become the object of art.

Art is alive because it is mortal.

Art is drama. Any relationship to art is also a relationship to death.

Art used to be painting, sculpture, music, etc, but now, all technology has become art. Of course, this form of art is still very primitive, but it is slowly replacing reality.

As I have been arguing for a long time now, there is a real need not simply for a political economy of wealth but also for a political economy of speed.

As I have said many times before, I was among the first people to experience the German Occupation of France during the Second World War. I was 7-13 years old during the War and did not really internalise its significance.

As I have said many times before, the speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light. And it is nothing else!

As I pointed out in The Art of the Motor and elsewhere, from now on we need two watches: a wristwatch to tell us what time it is and a GPS watch to tell us what space it is!

As I said back in 1984, the idea of logistics is not only about oil, about ammunitions and supplies but also about images.

Cyberspace is acting like God and deals with the idea of God who is, sees and hears everything.

Cyberspace is an accident of the real. Virtual reality is the accident of reality itself.

'Cyberwar' has nothing to do with the destruction brought about by bombs and grenades and so on.

Despite the economic disaster that is Russia, there are still air shows taking place in the country.

Digital messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery; the shock effect always wins out over the consideration of the informational content.

Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war - or the Gulf War - as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world.

Even among the elite, in government circles, technological culture is somewhat deficient.

For all the sophistication of GPS, there still remain numerous problems with their use. The most obvious problem in this context is the problem of landmines. For example, when the French troops went into Kosovo they were told that they were going to enter in half-tracks, over the open fields. But their leaders had forgotten about the landmines. And this was a major problem because, these days, landmines are no longer localized.

For example, it was this pack of wolves that sparked off the Rodney King affair a few years ago in Los Angeles. Let us consider the situation: a person videos Rodney King being beaten up by the cops. That person then sends in the footage to the TV station. Within hours riots flare up in the city!

For example, we have developed an artistic and a literary culture. Nevertheless, the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy.

For instance, in 1999, Bill Gates not only published a new book on work at the speed of thought but also detailed how Microsoft's 'Falconview' software would enable the destruction of bridges in Kosovo.

For instance, the Persian Gulf War was a miniature world war. It took place in a small geographical area. In this sense it was a local war. But it was one that made use of all the power normally reserved for global war.

For me, Sun Tzu's statement that military force is based upon deception is an extraordinary statement.

For me, the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and the war in Kosovo in 1999 are the prelude to the integral accident.

For me, then, territory and movement are linked. For instance, territory is controlled by the movements of horsemen, of tanks, of planes, and so on.

For the strategies of deception are concerned with deceiving an opponent through the logistics of perception. But these strategies are not merely aimed at the Serbs or the Iraqis but also at all those who might support [Slobodan] Milosevic or Saddam Hussein.

For the time being, technologies are colonizing our body through implants. We started with human implants, but research leads us to microtechnological implants.

For the US, GPS are a form of sovereignty! It is hardly surprising, then, that the EU has proposed its own GPS in order to be able to localize and to compete with the American GPS.

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

France and Germany were opposed to a maritime blockade of the Adriatic Sea without a mandate from the United Nations (UN). So, what we witnessed in Kosovo was an extraordinary war, a war waged solely with bombs from the air.

From the original watchtower through the anchored balloon to the reconnaissance aircraft and remote sensing-satellites, one and the same function has been indefinitely repeated, the eye's function being the function of a weapon.

Globalization cannot take shape without the speed of light.

GPS are everywhere. They are in cars. They were even in the half-tracks that, initially at least, were going to make the ground invasion in Kosovo possible.

GPS not only played a large and delocalizing role in the war in Kosovo but is increasingly playing a role in social life.

Hence not only the crisis of geopolitics and geostrategy but also the shift towards the emergence and dominance of chronostrategy.

However, the Kosovo War took place in orbital space. In other words, war now takes place in 'aero-electro-magnetic space'. It is equivalent to the birth of a new type of flotilla, a home fleet, of a new type of naval power, but in orbital space!

I am always concerned with ideas of territory and movement. Indeed, my first book after Bunker Archeology was entitled L'insecurite du territoire (1976).

I am of course thinking here about new planes such as the Sukhois. There is very little discussion about such developments but, for me, I am constantly astonished by the current developments within the Russian airforce.

I am very interested in and that is what Sun Tzu in his ancient Chinese text calls The Art of War.

I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.

I believe that the military-industrial complex is more important than ever. This is because the war in Kosovo gave fresh impetus not to the military-industrial complex but to the military-scientific complex. You can see this in China.

I believe that the politics of intervention and the Kosovo war prompted a fresh resumption of the arms race worldwide.

I could give examples of cabinet ministers, including defence ministers, who have no technological culture at all. In other words, what I am suggesting is that the hype generated by the publicity around the Internet and so on is not counter balanced by a political intelligence that is based on a technological culture.

I don't believe in simulationism, I believe that the word is already old-fashioned. As I see it, new technologies are substituting a virtual reality for an actual reality. And this is more than a phase: it's a definite change.

If we consider my latest book, Strategie de la deception, what we need to focus on are the other aspects of the same phenomenon.

If we look at the Gulf War, the same is also true. Indeed, my work on the logistics of perception and the Gulf War was so accurate that I was even asked to discuss it with high-ranking French military officers. They asked me: 'how is it that you wrote that book in 1984 and now it's happening for real?' My answer was: 'the problem is not mine but yours: you have not been doing your job properly!'

If we turn to the war in Kosovo, what do we find? We find the manipulation of the audience's emotions by the mass media.