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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

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J. G. Ballard
Age: 78 †
Born: 1930
Born: November 15
Died: 2009
Died: April 19
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Shanghai
China
James Graham Ballard
James Graham J. G. Ballard
Time
Myth
Thinking
Leads
Rational
Complete
Creatures
View
Mankind
Sane
Views
Enlightenment

More quotes by J. G. Ballard

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An arts degree is like a diploma in origami. And about as much use.
J. G. Ballard
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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
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The suburbs dream of violence.
J. G. Ballard
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If you can smell garlic, everything is all right.
J. G. Ballard
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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
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I felt the pressure of imagination against the doors of my mind was so great that they were going to burst.
J. G. Ballard
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A reality that is electronic... Once everybody's got a computer terminal in their home, to satisfy all their needs, all the domestic needs, there'll be a dismantling of the present broadcasting structure, which is far too limited and limiting.
J. G. Ballard
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Most writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.
J. G. Ballard
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The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.
J. G. Ballard
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So he left the lagoon and entered the jungle again, within a few days was completely lost, following the lagoons southward through the increasing rain and heat, attacked by alligators and giant bats, a second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn Sun.
J. G. Ballard
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But I wouldn't recommend writing. You can be a successful writer and never meet another soul. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
J. G. Ballard
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One of the things I took from my wartime experiences was that reality was a stage set... the comfortable day-to-day life, school, the home where one lives and all the rest of it... could be dismantled overnight.
J. G. Ballard
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Maybe you are a poet and a dreamer, but don't you realize that those two species are extinct now?
J. G. Ballard
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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
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People nowadays like to be together not in the old-fashioned way of, say, mingling on the piazza of an Italian Renaissance city, but, instead, huddled together in traffic jams, bus queues, on escalators and so on. It's a new kind of togetherness which may seem totally alien, but it's the togetherness of modern technology.
J. G. Ballard
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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
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If you're against globalisation, it doesn't achieve much by sort of bombing the head offices of Shell or Nestle. You unsettle people much more by blowing up an Oxfam shop because people can't understand the motive.
J. G. Ballard
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A general rule: if enough people predict something, it won't happen.
J. G. Ballard
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Fiction is a branch of neurology
J. G. Ballard
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Psychiatrists the dominant lay priesthood since the First World War.
J. G. Ballard