Nick > Nick's Quotes

“If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate...but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.”
― Franz Kafka

“Smile and others will smile back. Smile to show how transparent, how candid you are. Smile if you have nothing to say. Most of all, do not hide the fact you have nothing to say nor your total indifference to others. Let this emptiness, this profound indifference shine out spontaneously in your smile.”
― Jean Baudrillard

“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“The secret of theory is that truth does not exist.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Fragments

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.”
― Jean Baudrillard

“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

“the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“…sense of futility that comes from doing anything merely to prove to yourself that you can do it: having a child, climbing a mountain, making some sexual conquest, committing suicide.
The marathon is a form of demonstrative suicide, suicide as advertising: it is running to show you are capable of getting every last drop of energy out of yourself, to prove it… to prove what? That you are capable of finishing. Graffiti carry the same message. They simply say: I’m so-and-so and I exist! They are free publicity for existence.
Do we continually have to prove to ourselves that we exist? A strange sign of weakness, harbinger of a new fanaticism for a faceless performance, endlessly self-evident.”
― Jean Baudrillard, America

“Philosophy leads to death, sociology leads to suicide.”
― Jean Baudrillard

“Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals.”
― Jean Baudrillard

“One has never said better how much "humanism", "normality", "quality of life" were nothing but the vicissitudes of profitability.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays cosily tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“I am Cnaiur urs Skiötha, breaker-of-horses-and-men!",
"I am Cnaiür urs Skiötha, most violent of all men!
I bear your fathers and brothers upon my arms!”
― R. Scott Bakker

“Faith is the truth of passion. Since no passion is more true than another, faith is the truth of nothing.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“The thoughts of all men arise from the darkness. If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness That Comes Before

“Doubt begets understanding, and understanding begets compassion. Verily, it is conviction that kills.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Thousandfold Thought

“...Communism, it's a reactive formation derived from capitalism. For this reason it's less flexible and has a lower survival potential. The days of laissez-faire capitalism are completely dead, and the assumptions of nineteenth-century Communism are equally dead, because they were based on laissez-faire capitalism. While there's hardly a trace of it left in capitalist countries, Communism is still reacting to something that's been dead for over a hundred years.
And present-day Communism clings to this outmoded concepts, refusing to acknowledge the contradictions and failures of the Marxist system. Communism doesn't have any capacity to change. Capitalism is flexible, and it's changing all the time, and it's changed immeasurably. Communism apparently are still asserting that they are not changing, they're following the same Marxist principles. We don't have any principles. It's an advantage.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”
― William S. Burroughs

“There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
― Walter Benjamin