J. G. Ballard - Human Quotes

12 Sourced Quotes

View all J. G. Ballard Quotes
Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.

J. G. Ballard
Some people didn't like the novel, it is in some ways extremely bleak. But if you are dealing with the kind of subjects I am — trying to demystify the delusions we have about ourselves, to get a more accurate fix on human nature — then people are unsettled. And the easiest way to deal with that is to say it's weird or it's cold.

J. G. Ballard
The human body as an obedient coolie, to be fed and hosed down, and given just enough sexual freedom to sedate itself.

J. G. Ballard
I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit and force it to look in the mirror.

J. G. Ballard
A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status — all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing).

J. G. Ballard
God was a clever idea … The human race came up with a winner there.

J. G. Ballard
My brief stay at the hospital had already convinced me that the medical profession was an open door to anyone nursing a grudge against the human race.

J. G. Ballard
Human beings today … are surrounded by huge institutions we can never penetrate: the City [London's Wall Street], 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
Twenty years ago no one could have imagined the effects the Internet would have: entire relationships flourish, friendships prosper…there's a vast new intimacy and accidental poetry, not to mention the weirdest porn. The entire human experience seems to unveil itself like the surface of a new planet.

J. G. Ballard
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
I accepted that a new kind of hate had emerged, silent and disciplined, a racism tempered by loyalty cards and PIN numbers. Shopping was now the model for all human behaviour, drained of emotion and anger.

J. G. Ballard
Nonetheless, Scranton had travelled in space. He had known the loneliness of separation from all other human beings, he had gazed at the empty perspectives that I myself had seen.

J. G. Ballard