Jean Baudrillard Quotes

It’s always more intriguing to imagine what’s happening, as opposed to seeing everything, because then you can use your imagination. I always wanted to be at a distance.

Justin's fan are called Beliebers because it's politically incorrect to use the word retards.

Feeble and timid minds . . . consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures as the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence.

We reject the use of national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime.

Some people criticize me for using sources that are a bit low brow (this quote is from 'Gladiator') but you know what? 'I'm just going to use that hostility to make me stronger, not weaker' as Kelly Rowland said on the X Factor.

He turns his back to the far shore and rows toward it. He can in this way travel away from, yet still see, his house....he feels he is riding a floating skeleton...Some birds in the almost-dark are flying as close to their reflections as possible.

In vain would science scan and trace Firmly her aspect. All the while, There gleams upon her far-off face A vague unfathomable smile.

Everything is too far away in the past, or mysteriously too close.

Everybody uses pop culture as a shorthand.

There's only about 6 inches that turns that halo into a noose.

The people who review my books, generally, are kind of youngish culture writers who aspire to write books. When someone writes a book review, they obviously already self-identify as a writer. I mean, they are. They're writers, they're critics, and they're writing about a book about a writer who's a critic. So I think it's really hard for people to distance themselves from what they're criticizing.

Popular culture is inescapable in the U.S. Why not use it?

A satyagrahi is sometimes bound to use language which is capable of two meanings, provided both the meanings are obvious and necessary and there is no intention to deceive anyone.

Maybe we didn't even have a chance. The message of American Pop Art was so powerful and so optimistic. But it was also very limited, and that led us to believe that we could somehow distance ourselves from it and communicate a different intention.

All of us somehow felt that the next battleground was going to be culture. We all felt somehow that our culture had been stolen from us-by commercial forces, by advertising agencies, by TV broadcasters. It felt like we were no longer singing our songs and telling stories, and generating our culture from the bottom up, but now we were somehow being spoon-fed this commercial culture top down.

I opposed the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie. I read the book and took a critical distance. I did not think The Satanic Verses is a blasphemous book. I did not consider the book as being a great read, but as an intellectual I read, I assess, and I respond. I make a difference between true freedom of expression to which we owe a response and provocation, which we ignore.

If I had to fall in love with all the actresses I play with and live the situations I have to play, I would be lost ! I need to be solid and know who I really am to have fun in making something else. I noticed, while talking with other actors, that they often let ambiguity float. I don't like ambiguity, it's dangerous. I need distance. I also think that the result would prevent the audience from identifying to the characters. If you feel the things too strongly, you simply close the doors.

The distance between Evil and Good is a vast expanse in which many can exist without being either.

We imagine what this country is, but quite clearly, this country is a mystery. I mean, one of the reasons I did the election ads is, I thought I could learn something. Like, what the hell is going on? I think anybody - particularly a person of leftist persuasion such as myself - who stops and thinks even for a moment, realizes that something strange is going on and we don't quite get it.

Also because I'm ambiguously ethnic looking, you know, I come to New York and I can be anything. People generally think I'm half of whatever they are.

I cannot judge my work while I am doing it. I have to do as painters do, stand back and view it from a distance, but not too great a distance. How great? Guess.

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.