If I could believe in utopia, it would be a utopia of free movement, a perpetual assertion of self-determined existence in space and time. But I cannot believe in utopia, so I believe in movement attained through and limited by struggle, tension, anxiety and the assertion of my personal power against the power of the earth, against gravity and death.

I cannot believe in utopia, because utopia insists on an absolute consensus among people, and such a consensus cancels the individual's power to assert his and her presence in the world. Consensus is an ally of gravity. It is in fact a form of gravity that slowly and insidiously disables individuals and makes them impotent before the relentless claims of gravity and death. I declare war on consensus.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Aerial Paris' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 64

The construction of a new city within and in opposition to an existing one amounts to an act of renunciation and even of violence, more lasting in its effects than those achieved by the gun. One need only compare the changes made to cities by modern warfare and by modern architecture to confirm this idea. The process of changing from one type of order to another is always violent. Over time, architecture can be the most potent weapon of change.

 Lebbeus Woods, 'Underground Berlin' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 50

Self-preserving cultures seek static equilibrium, the maintenance of a status quo, as the founding principle of social coherence. The means of this maintenance is conformity to standards and norms. Contradictions, conflicts and paradoxes are intolerable in such societies, because they are inconsistencies that undermine requisite conventions.

Contemporary society is not self-preserving, but essentially self-transforming. It seeks dynamic equilibrium. Continual change is what it is based on, and what it needs above all else. This extends fully into the realm of knowledge, what it is and what it means today. Knowledge is no longer that inertial body of facts which enforces stasis, but is in fact the impetus to and energy driving change on every level of society and culture.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Heterarchies' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 46

So long as the concept of hierarchy dominates architecture (as it presently does), architecture will stay rooted in classical models, at the urban and building scales alike. So long as architecture stays rooted in classical models (as it presently does), it will continue to express an old, even archaic, idea of knowledge. So long as architecture expresses another idea of knowledge than that which best serves the present conditions of living (as it presently does), architecture will be a regressive force in the world of human affairs, even of human existence itself.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Heterarchies' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 46

architecture resisting change, even as it flows from it, struggling to crystallise and be eternal, even as it is broken and scattered – architecture seeking nobility of presence, yet possessed of the knowledge that only the incomplete can claim nobility in a world of the gratuitous, the packaged, the promoted and the already sold – architecture seeking nobility of persistence in a world of the eternally perishing, itself giving way to the necessity of its moment

Lebbeus Woods, 'Turbulence' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 40

No puzzling, no arguments, just pure experience. Knowing a thing just as it is known. No dualisms or those other tight systems that end in resolution, therefore in spiritual death. Better to know nothing, than to know those as true.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Centricity'' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 27

The architecture of tactility cannot be separated from the architecture of ephemerality, either in concept or in implementation.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political act' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 13

One does not participate by following the crisis of change, but by being part of its initiation.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political act' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 11

The difference between the hierarchical and the heterarchical city is the difference between being and becoming.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political act' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) p. 11

Existential beauty is destroyed by the impulse to possess, to own, to contain, to hold fast, therefore to dominate. Expression is possession. the manifestation of a lust for domination. Any attempt to express in a form an idea external to it is an attempt to arrest the idea in time, to control it beyond its life. I despise all such 'expressionism', and none more than that which appropriates ineffable symbols, archetypes – in fact, types of any kind. These are the most vain and tyrannical attempts to eternalise the ephemeral.

Lebbeus Woods, 'Anarchitecture: Architecture is a political act' in ANARCHITECTURE: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy Editions, 1992) pp. 10-11

'I love reason, but my love does not make me a fanatic,' Brotteaux answered. 'Reason is our guide, a light to show us our way; but if you make a divinity of it, it will blind you and lead you into crime.'

Anatole France, The Gods Will Have Blood (Penguin Books, 1990) p. 80

Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well.

Anatole France, The Gods Will Have Blood (Penguin Books, 1990) p. 71

Latent i vår vokabulär vilar ett antagande om ägande som den mest fundamentala relationen, om statiska atomära enheter av du och jag istället för ett dynamiskt vi i ständig tillblivelse. Grammatikens kategorier av subjekt och objekt kräver ett förtingligande av det som skall omsättas i ord: endast det som kan objektifieras låter tala om sig. Den grammatiska hanteringen av min kvinna, min mor, min son följer samma princip som den av min bil, min sko, min bok. Objektifiering är en språklig förutsättning.

Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) p. 19

Tekniken som räddare av liv, och räddare från liv. Mer än något annat är tekniken ett medel för att undkomma den direkta livserfarenheten, att skyla nakenheten som det medför att vara hud mot hud med tillvaron.
Genom teknologin skapas en värld dränerad på mänsklighet, och genom teknologin erbjuds vi en tillflyktsort från detta effektivitetens inferno. Framsteget biter sig självt i svansen: det konstruerar omtänksamma robotar för att fylla frånvaron av den omtänksamma människa som är upptagen i robotkonstruktion.

Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) pp. 116-117

Tekniken infantiliserar människan genom att avlägsna henne från det direkta uppfyllandet av sina mest grundläggande behov, samtidigt som den förser henne med en illusion av allmakt och fullständig autonomi. Den människa som är mest utlämnad till en teknologisk infrastruktur för sin överlevnad är i den kulturella mytologin den sant fria individen. Det är det lilla barnets försvarslösa omnipotens reproducerad och förvrängd i industriell skala, en abstraherad tillit till blodlösa strukturer, ett intellektuellt oberoende skapat genom fullständig fysisk utsatthet. Den tekniska ordningen innebär ständig geografisk-ekonomisk expansion, och ett lika oupphörligt krympande utrymme för den egna mänskligheten. Civilisation har sitt ursprung i det yttres utvidgning och det inres kringskärning.

Helena Granström, Alltings Mått (Ruin, 2008) pp. 114-115