“What ‘relations of production’ in capitalist society represented for Karl Marx, ‘relations of definition’ represent for risk society. Both concern relations of domination (Beck 2002; Goldblatt 1996). Among the relations of definition are the rules, institutions and capabilities which specify how risks are to be identified in particular contexts (for example, within nation-states, but also in relations between them). They form at the legal, epistemological and cultural power matrix in which risk politics is organized (see chapters 9 and 10). Relations of definition power can accordingly be explored through four clusters of questions:” 

“The theory of metamorphosis goes beyond theory of world risk society: it is not about the negative side effects of goods but about the positive side effects of bads.” 

“Climate risk teaches us that the nation is not the centre of the world.” 

“Change in society, social change, routinizes a key concept in sociology. Everyone knows what it means. Change brings a characteristic future of modernity into focus, namely permanent transformation, while basic concepts and the certainties that support them remain constant. Metamorphosis, by contrast, destabilizes these certainties of modern society. It shifts the focus to ‘being in the world’ and ‘seeing the world’, to events and processes which are unintended, which generally go unnoticed, which prevail beyond the domains of politics and democracy as side effects of radical technical and economic modernization. They trigger a fundamental shock, a sea change which explodes the anthropological constants of our previous existence and understanding of the world. Metamorphosis in this sense means simply that what was unthinkable yesterday is real and possible today.” 

“In all previously existing democracies, there have been two types of authority: one coming from the people and the other coming from the enemy. Enemy stereotypes empower. Enemy stereotypes have the highest conflict priority. They make it possible to cover up and force together all the other social antitheses. One could say that enemy stereotypes constitute an alternative energy source for consensus, a raw material becoming scarce with the development of modernity. They grant exemption from democracy by its own consent [143].” 

We do not yet have the solutions to these questions, but the awareness that we live in an endangered world is present in more and more life situations.

You could say that we are living in an internally globalized country.

You cannot make peace with terrorists. The normal dividing lines between war and peace do not apply.

When they come to Europe, they are confronted by still closed borders. Thus, the concept of open borders is a very selective concept, one that is not taken seriously at all in the experience of non-Europeans.

Western countries in particular can today no longer be separated from Muslim societies, because they have them within themselves. They are themselves internally globalized.

We are living in a world that is beyond controllability.

This experience actually means the very opposite: the largest military power was unable to stop such a sensitive attack and will be unable to rule out such a possibility in the future. Precisely this is the background to the United States' military interventions.

The world has become so complex that the idea of a power in which everything comes together and can be controlled in a centralized way is now erroneous.

The idea that you surrender your identity when you relinquish national powers is unhelpful. No, indeed, precisely the opposite is the case: if done in an intelligent way, you attain the sovereignty to better solve national problems in cooperation with others.

The basic assumption of the secular society is that modernity overcomes religion.

That was the first major social sciences conference at which social scientists from all cultures wanted to reach a consensus on whether we can continue to pursue a national course in the social sciences or whether we need a cosmopolitan path that also connects us in a new way.

Relinquishing apparent national sovereignty does not have to entail a loss of national sovereignty, but can actually be a benefit.

Nonetheless, we continue to be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state, guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized government.

Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.

Initially, the horrific images of September 11th triggered an enormous wave of solidarity.

In the first instance, therefore, global terrorism created a kind of global community sharing a common fate, something we had previously considered impossible.

In the final analysis, terror is also another proof of the fact that the superpower is not really a superpower. It was vulnerable.

I held a conference in Harvard where Americans said they didn't believe in risk. They thought it was just European hysteria. Then the terrorist attacks happened and there was a complete conversion. Suddenly terrorism was the central risk.

I forced myself to think what is the new concept and it became clear to me that it was risk, not only in technology and ecology, but in life and employment, too.

Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.

Europe itself is an embodiment of this diversity.

But it then very soon became clear that the response of a war against terrorism, initially conceived of in a metaphorical sense, began to be taken increasingly seriously and came to entail waging a real war.

And therefore we must seek dialogue in this networked world. We must ask which voice was actually attempting to make itself heard and saw no other possibility of gaining a hearing. To that extent, for a while this also represented a forced opening of a cosmopolitan view.

And the terror itself is an example of the world's uncontrollability.

And it also became clear that these conditions of inequality and historical injustice have given rise to a feeling of hate in the world - a deeply felt hate that cannot easily be overcome with a few good words.

"In the studio, I'm always throwing people on different instruments."

"In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means."

"In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs."

"I would love to do an electronic record. There's just so much to see and do and try. And life goes by."

"I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back."

"I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out."

"I hear a lot of bad TV commercials that try to sound like Where It's At. That pretty much turned me off from using the electric piano for a lot of years."

"I hadn't done much rapping in a while. I really wasn't sure I was going to do that any more. For a couple years I thought I was done with that. It wasn't really required of me."

"I did that Grammys thing - I did a little freeform poem."

"Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way."

"No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist."

"I came up in a time when Springsteen, the Stones, Dylan, and the Beatles were still dominant. For every magazine cover with a new band, there were five covers with one of those guys."

"I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche."

"To me, 'rock star' conjures up something like a mystic: someone who sees himself as above other people, someone who has the key to the secret that people want to know."

"It's really hard for me to commit, one way or the other. I was just always creating and seeing what came out."

"When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines."

"There are a lot of people who really abused sampling and gave it a bad name, by just taking people's entire hit songs and rapping over them. It gave publishers license to get a little greedy."

"I've never been able to relate to apathy. I've always been doing stuff, been in action, making music or working just to get by."

"Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know."

"There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing."