Zygmunt Bauman

“Happiness needs one-upmanship.”

“Why do I write books? Why do I think? Why should I be passionate? Because things could be different, they could be made better.”

“The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom. It is something we have lost sight of.”

“We already have - thanks to technology, development, skills, the efficiency of our work - enough resources to satisfy all human needs. But we don't have enough resources, and we are unlikely ever to have, to satisfy human greed.”

“The consumerist culture insists that swearing eternal loyalty to anything and anybody is imprudent, since in this world new glittering opportunities crop up daily.”

“Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice. There is a fear of a collective disaster. Terrorism, genocide, flu, tsunamis.”

“Relationships, like cars, should undergo regular services to make sure they are still roadworthy.”

“Partnerships are increasingly seen through the prism of promises and expectations, and as a kind of product for consumers: satisfaction on the spot, and if not fully satisfied, return the product to the shop or replace it with a new and improved one! You don't, after all, stick to your car, or computer, or iPod, when better ones appear.”

“As far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”