J. G. Ballard Quotes

Quotes about:

• I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

  J. G. Ballard

  Believe, Night, Imagination

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  54 Copy quote

• The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reason, Driven, Competing

  "J.G. Ballard Quotes: Does the Future Have a Future?". Book edited by V. Vale and Mike Ryan, 2004.

  64 Copy quote

• We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel.

  J. G. Ballard

  Technology, Fiction, World

  "Crash". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1973.

  38 Copy quote

• I think the enemy of creativity in the world today is that so much thinking is done for you.

  J. G. Ballard

  Creativity, Thinking, Enemy

  Interview with Kate Mikhail, www.theguardian.com. September 21, 2002.

  15 Copy quote

• Sooner or later, all games become serious.

  J. G. Ballard

  Hippie, Games, Serious

  "Super-Cannes". Book by J. G. Ballard, 2000.

  47 Copy quote

• Art exists because reality is neither real nor significant.

  J. G. Ballard

  Art, Real, Reality

  23 Copy quote

• The Enlightenment view of mankind is a complete myth. It leads us into thinking we're sane and rational creatures most of the time, and we're not.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, Views, Enlightenment

  7 Copy quote

• Human beings today are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City, the banking system, political and advertising conglomerates, vast entertainment enterprises. They've made themselves user friendly, but they define the tastes to which we conform. They're rather subtle, subservient tyrants, but no less sinister for that.

  J. G. Ballard

  Wall, Cities, Tyrants

  "A User's Guide to the Millennium". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

  9 Copy quote

• In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.

  J. G. Ballard

  Freedom, World, Madness

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  34 Copy quote

• Unhappy parents teach you a lesson that lasts a lifetime.

  J. G. Ballard

  Parent, Unhappy, Lessons

  39 Copy quote

• The only truly alien planet is Earth.

  J. G. Ballard

  Science, Earth, Aliens

  J. G. Ballard (2009). “Concrete Island”, p.5, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

• Along with our passivity, we're entering a profoundly masochistic phase everyone is a victim these days, of parents, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, even love itself. And how much we enjoy it. Our happiest moments are spent trying to think up new varieties of victimhood.

  J. G. Ballard

  Thinking, Doctors, Parent

  "Age of Unreason". Interview with Jeannette Baxter, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2004.

  17 Copy quote

• Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reality, Numbers, Forget

  "The Benign Catastrophist". Interview with Susie Mackenzie, www.theguardian.com. September 06, 2003.

  10 Copy quote

• Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reality, Sprung Up, Fiction

  "Fictions of Every Kind" (1971)

  34 Copy quote

• Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute.

  J. G. Ballard

  Science, Technology, Thinking

  Introduction to the French edition of "Crash", 1974.

  30 Copy quote

• I admired anyone who could unsettle people.

  J. G. Ballard

  People

  26 Copy quote

• Sooner or later, everything turns into television.

  J. G. Ballard

  Television, Turns, Sooner Or Later

  "Talking Out of Turn #34: JG Ballard". Interview with Kevin Courrier, www.criticsatlarge.ca. 1987.

  8 Copy quote

• The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates - the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software.

  J. G. Ballard

  Anxiety, Marketing, News

  "A User's Guide to the Millennium". Book by J. G. Ballard, 1996.

  8 Copy quote

• Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

  J. G. Ballard

  Real, Writing, Genius

  56 Copy quote

• A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.

  J. G. Ballard

  Nature, Sex, Mean

  J. G. Ballard (2001). “The complete short stories”, Fourth Estate

  94 Copy quote

• For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channelled into productive forms, but I doubt it. I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game.

  J. G. Ballard

  Children, Moving, Technology

  "JG Ballard: Theatre of Cruelty". Interview with Jean-Paul Coillard, 1998.

  53 Copy quote

• The chief role of the universities is to prolong adolescence into middle age, at which point early retirement ensures that we lack the means or the will to enforce significant change.

  J. G. Ballard

  Retirement, Mean, Significant Change

  "Age of unreason". Interview With Jeannette Baxter, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2004.

  13 Copy quote

• Surrender to a logic more powerful than reason.

  J. G. Ballard

  Powerful, Logic, Surrender

  11 Copy quote

• Memories have huge staying power, but like dreams, they thrive in the dark, surviving for decades in the deep waters of our minds like shipwrecks on the sea bed.

  J. G. Ballard

  Dream, Memories, Dark

  36 Copy quote

• Electronic aids, particularly domestic computers, will help the inner migration, the opting out of reality. Reality is no longer going to be the stuff out there, but the stuff inside your head. It's going to be commercial and nasty at the same time.

  J. G. Ballard

  Reality, Migration, Stuff

  Heavy Metal Interview, April 1982.

  91 Copy quote

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