The need to speak, even if one has nothing to…

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning. (p. 30)

Sourced, The Ecstasy of Communication (1987)

Other Jean Baudrillard Quotes

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology. - View Quote Details on Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to…
Not only does reality resist those who still criticize it, but it also abandons those who defend it. Maybe it is a way for reality to get its revenge from those who claim to believe in it for the sole purpose of eventually transforming it: sending back its supporters to their own desires. ( essay -”Radical Thought”) - View Quote Details on Not only does reality resist those who still criticize it,…
Picturing others and everything which brings you closer to them is futile from the instant that ‘communication’ can make their presence immediate. (p. 42) - View Quote Details on Picturing others and everything which brings you closer to them…
There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea. - View Quote Details on There are only a few images that are not forced…
Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: “I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you.” Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behaviour, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: “Let me seduce you” (p. 67) - View Quote Details on Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the…
For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models. - View Quote Details on For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators…
Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction. (p. 57) - View Quote Details on Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction…
The close-up of a face is as obscene as a sexual organ seen from up close. It is a sexual organ. The promiscuity of the detail, the zoom-in, takes on a sexual value. (p. 43) - View Quote Details on The close-up of a face is as obscene as a…
Today’s terrorism is not the product of a traditional history of anarchism, nihilism, or fanaticism. It is instead the contemporary partner of globalization. - View Quote Details on Today’s terrorism is not the product of a traditional history…
The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is already reproduced, the hyper-real. (p. 146) - View Quote Details on The real is not only what can be reproduced, but…