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Duality
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The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Evolution
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Man has lost the basic skill of the ape, the ability to scratch its back. Which gave it extraordinary independence, and the liberty to associate for reasons other than the need for mutual back-scratching.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Excess
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We are no longer in a state of growth; we are in a state of excess. We are living in a society of excrescence. The boil is growing out of control, recklessly at cross purposes with itself, its impacts multiplying as the causes disintegrate.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Fear
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Terror is as much a part of the concept of truth as runniness is of the concept of jam. We wouldn't like jam if it didn't, by its very nature, ooze. We wouldn't like truth if it wasn't sticky, if, from time to time, it didn't ooze blood.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Feelings
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Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Food
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Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other's food.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Fools, Foolishness
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In days gone by, we were afraid of dying in dishonor or a state of sin. Nowadays, we are afraid of dying fools. Now the fact is that there is no Extreme Unction to absolve us of foolishness. We endure it here on earth as subjective eternity.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Freedom
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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.
-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.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Genius
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Genius is childhood recaptured.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Government
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Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved -- commitment to a scenario.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Greatness & Great Things
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We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Heroes/Heroism
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What is a society without a heroic dimension?
-Jean Baudrillard
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Holidays
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A woman spent all Christmas Day in a telephone box without ringing anyone. If someone comes to phone, she leaves the box, then resumes her place afterwards. No one calls her either, but from a window in the street, someone watched her all day, no doubt since they had nothing better to do. The Christmas syndrome.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Hollywood
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The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Humanity
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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.
-Jean Baudrillard
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A society which allows an abominable event to burgeon from its dung heap and grow on its surface is like a man who lets a fly crawl unheeded across his face or saliva dribble from his mouth -- either epileptic or dead.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Identity
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It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Information
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Information can tell us everything. It has all the answers. But they are answers to questions we have not asked, and which doubtless don't even arise.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Innocence
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There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Language
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If everything is perfect, language is useless. This is true for animals. If animals don't speak, it's because everything's perfect for them. If one day they start to speak, it will be because the world has lost a certain sort of perfection.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
-Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, ch. 3 (1987, trans. 1990)
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Laughter
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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.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Love
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To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.
-Jean Baudrillard
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If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
-Jean Baudrillard
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Books by and about Jean Baudrillard