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Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard Quotes

Philosopher

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Famous Jean Baudrillard Quotes

“Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.”

SaidCultureQualityEmptyDepthNostalgiaAuthenticitySensationsOriginalitySignalsEclecticDisposableSuperficialityCoherenceSwirlsPromiscuous
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of the cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony - this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.”

PeopleWellsLooksLevelsCitiesConditionsOrdinaryIdealsOvercomingStressPressureAverageEntertainmentContraryAlternativesHolidayConcentrationEcstasyVacationPollutionAbstractionDeliberateAlienationPlungeAggravationOrdinary LifeMonotonyArtificeBustleAbove AverageCongestionPopular Entertainment
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“Here in the U.S., culture is not that delicious panacea which we Europeans consume in a sacramental mental space and which has its own special columns in the newspapers - and in people's minds. Culture is space, speed, cinema, technology. This culture is authentic, if anything can be said to be authentic.”

PeopleIfsMindSaidCultureSpaceTechnologySpecialSpeedNewspapersCinemaDeliciousColumnsPanacea
Book:Mass Identity Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard
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“As for freedom, it will soon cease to exist in any shape or form. Living will depend upon absolute obedience to a strict set of arrangements, which it will no longer be possible to transgress. The air traveler is not free. In the future, life's passengers will be even less so: they will travel through their lives fastened to their (corporate) seats.”

FormFreedomAirDependsShapesAbsolutesCeaseObedienceCorporateSeatsArrangementsTravelerStrictPassengersFuture Life
Book:Cool memories
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“Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.”

CountryShowsLeftLaughingTakenTelevisionLaughterTragedyScreensGreekGood TimesOther CountriesViewersHaving A Good TimeIntegratedChorusLeft AloneGreek TragedyAmerican TelevisionConsternation
Book:America
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“We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and snug in the social, our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.”

LittlesEyePassionSocialPeaceEnjoyHalfNiceTelevisionBecomingCatPeacefulArtificialIndifferentHistoricModernityModernismParadesDomesticityClosed Eyes
Book:Cool memories
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“Depression moods lead, almost invariably, to accidents. But, when they occur, our mood changes again, since the accident shows we can draw the world in our wake, and that we still retain some degree of power even when our spirits are low. A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.”

WorldStillsStatesShowsLightSpiritPowerStrangeDepressionDegreesLowsDrawsSeriesAccidentsMoodConsiderationPositivelyHeartedLight HeartedMood Changes
Book:Cool memories
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“Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.”

PeopleShouldPoliticsAcceptingPowerPoliticianGratefulProfoundBurdenRevengePassingPassingsContemptBe GratefulCorpses
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air-conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.”

LightNightRichAirMiddleAcceptanceCivilizationEmptyScaredMathLuxuryDesertHotelArtificialPrimitiveHuntersLitConditioningAdmirableMindlessDementedCoolingAir ConditioningSkylinesArtificial Light
Book:Mass Identity Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard
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“You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is getting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can't disappear anymore. You die in a state of total indecision.”

ThinkingWorldNeedsStatesDiesEnergyDecisionNumbersBalanceProjectsInfiniteDisappearScalesUselessImmenseSmallestUncertainIndecision
Book:Cool memories
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“The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls.”

MenRealityFunnySexSpaceOpinionFashionHe ManHabitMoralityClothesConscienceIdealsResponseFree WillPollsTransparencyLiberatedPollingOpinion Polls
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we [Europeans] shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.”

GivingRealityFormImaginationNaturalFictionOppositesNostalgiaTendenciesImaginaryAnticipateFiction And Reality
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“It is not enough for theory to describe and analyze, it must itself be an event in the universe it describes. In order to do this theory must partake of and become the acceleration of this logic. It must tear itself from all referents and take pride only in the future. Theory must operate on time at the cost of a deliberate distortion of present reality.”

EnoughRealityOrderUniverseEventsTearsTheoryPrideCostLogicDeliberateDistortionAcceleration
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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“This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion”

EndsUseFilmCasesClearModernHumourDistancePopsCriticalAdvertisingSpyAmbiguityComplicityAllusionCollusion
Book:The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures
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“As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their oscillated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.”

GivingFirstsEndsEyeLastsTurnsFallCultureLostMorningCenturyApproachWindowWinterBrushesCurtainsFalling DownMistIcyDreamyAgilityDemented
Book:Cool memories
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“If we consider the superiority of the human species, the size of its brain, its powers of thinking, language and organization, we can say this: were there the slightest possibility that another rival or superior species might appear, on earth or elsewhere, man would use every means at his disposal to destroy it.”

IfsThinkingMenHumansMeanUseMightEarthLanguageBrainPossibilityOrganizationSpeciesSizeSuperiorsElsewhereSuperiorityRivalsHuman SpeciesVery Mean
Book:Selected Writings
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“The price we pay for the complexity of life is too high. When you think of all the effort you have to put in -telephonic, technological and relational -to alter even the slightest bit of behavior in this strange world we call social life, you are left pining for the straightforwardness of primitive peoples and their physical work.”

ThinkingWorldLife IsLeftSocialBitsEffortPayStrangeBehaviorSimplicityComplexityPrimitiveTechnologicalSocial LifePiningStrange World
Author:Jean Baudrillard
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