Quotes from Jean Baudrillard

Difference is itself a utopia: the idea that such pairs of terms can be split up is a dream – and the idea of subsequently reuniting them is another.

Bir baÅŸka deyiÅŸle kitlelerin Beaubourg'a koÅŸmalar?n?n nedeni yüzlerce y?ld?r kendilerini yoran, b?kt?ran bu kültür kar??s?nda salya ak?tmak deÄŸil, her zaman nefret etmiÅŸ olduklar? bir kültürün yas?n? tutma f?rsat?n? kitle hâlinde ilk kez ellerine geçirmiÅŸ olmalar?d?r.

In a civilization where synchronism and diachronism strive to establish systematic and exclusive control over reality, a third dimension, that of anachronism, nevertheless emerges (and this as much at the level of objects as at the level of behaviours and social structures). This regressive dimension, though it attests to a relative setback for the system, nevertheless finds a place within that system and even, paradoxically, enables the system to function.

Without raising a stink, Or even much of a laugh.

When the real no longer is what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.

One of the two adversaries is a rug salesman, the other an arms salesman: they have neither the same logic nor the same strategy, even though they are both crooks. There is not enough communication between them to enable them to make war upon each other.

It is almost normal to lead a double life when you are alone. It is much more difficult when there are two of you. At last, a genuine madman in the street - someone who doesn't need a mobile phone to talk to himself. Some encounters stay in the memory thanks to the tone of voice, which you remember on an infra-red scale, so to speak, without being able to pin-point it.

Such is the well-tempered application of the principle of evil. If the system fails to be everything, nothing will remain of it. If thought fails to be nothing, something will remain of it.

The Transphilosophical Divide: the point where truth begins to exist on both sides of the line, the point where all contradictory hypotheses can be simultaneously verified.

The sudden cancellation of a planned event or of some decision or other is one of those subtle pleasures with which chance occasionally blesses us.

If destiny is implacable, that is because you have not known how to please it.

That everything exceptional is doomed to be destroyed derives from the symbolic rule that no player must be bigger than the game itself.

In the past, catharsis was the purification of the passions by fire. Today it is their liquidation by flow.

Speech always begins with stammering. Acts and action always begin with trembling. There is no continuum of the will. It acts on the body by fits and starts (stossweise) and is the product of an interval, a rapid alternation, between tension and release: to act is to produce a difference - even a slight one - between you and yourself. If you eliminate the intervals, tetany ensues: you shake all over.

the objects in our lives, as distinct from the way we make use of them at a given moment, represent something much more, something profoundly related to subjectivity: for a while the object is a resistant material body, it is also, simultaneously, a mental realm over which I hold sway, a thing whose meaning is governed by myself alone. It is all my own, the object of my passion.

Current events are an incurable illness.

Innocence, that mild form of mental deficiency, has the same aphrodisiac effect as softness of skin.

He who has everything will keep what he has. From him who has nothing, even that will be taken away. Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide. Shrivelled anus, short-windedness, limp member, short-sightedness, angioplastied ventricle, urethral polyps - but a clear, hard head.

Paradoxical confidence is the confidence we place in someone on the basis of their failure or their absence of qualities. The prototype of of this confidence is the failure of prophecy [...] following which the group, instead of denying its leader and dispersing, closes ranks around him and creates religious, sectarian, and ecclesiastical institutions to preserve the faith. Institutions all the more solid for deriving their energy from the failure of the prophecy.

L'art ne meurt pas parce qu'il n'y en a plus ; il meurt parce qu'il y en a trop.

He does not define concepts, he does not analyse them, he does not criticize them: he murders them (but the crime is never perfect).

One of the variants of this lethal accomplishment, of this acting-out, is the realization of all metaphors - the collapse of the metaphor into the real. Here, again, we have the phantasm of materializing all that is parable, myth, fable and metaphor. Romain Gary: 'All humanity's metaphors end up becoming realities. I am coming to wonder whether the real aim of science is not a validation of metaphors.

Choose: of all wars, the one that will not take place. Of all possibilities, the least probable. Of all concepts, the most inconceivable. Of all meditations, the most untimely. Of all possible enemies, the one beneath all suspicion.

The charm of sleepless nights is the idea that tomorrow will not come.