J. G. Ballard: Quotes about the future

J. G. Ballard was British writer. Explore interesting quotes on future.
J. G. Ballard: 156   quotes 7   likes

“Our governments are preparing for a future without work, and that includes the petty criminals. Leisure societies lie ahead of us… People will still work — or, rather, some people will work, but only for a decade of their lives.”

J. G. Ballard book Cocaine Nights

"Dr. Sanger"
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Context: Our governments are preparing for a future without work, and that includes the petty criminals. Leisure societies lie ahead of us... People will still work — or, rather, some people will work, but only for a decade of their lives. They will retire in their late thirties, with fifty years of idleness in front of them. … But how do you energize people, give them back some sense of community? A world lying on its back is vulnerable to any cunning predator. Politics are a pastime for a professional caste and fail to excite the rest of us. Religious belief demands a vast effort of imaginative and emotional commitment, difficult to muster if you're still groggy from last night's sleeping pill. Only one thing is left which can rouse people, threaten them directly and force them to act together. … Crime, and transgressive behavior — by which I mean all activities which aren't necessarily illegal, but provoke us and tap our need for strong emotion, quicken the nervous system and jump the synapses deadened by leisure and inaction.

People , Lie , Future

“I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring.”

J. G. Ballard

Interview (30 October 1982) in Re/Search no. 8/9 (1984)
Context: I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring. And that's my one fear: that everything has happened; nothing exciting or new or interesting is ever going to happen again … the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul.

Fear , Future

“My novels offer an extreme hypothesis which future events may disprove — or confirm. They're in the nature of long-range weather forecasts.”

J. G. Ballard

As quoted in "Age of unreason" by Jeannette Baxter in The Guardian (22 June 2004) http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/jun/22/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.jgballard
Context: The notions about the benefits of transgression in my last three novels are not ones I want to see fulfilled. Rather, they are extreme possibilities that may be forced into reality by the suffocating pressures of the conformist world we inhabit. Boredom and a deadening sense of total pointlessness seem to drive a lot of meaningless crimes, from the Hungerford and Columbine shootings to the Dando murder, and there have been dozens of similar crimes in the US and elsewhere over the past 30 years.
These meaningless crimes are much more difficult to explain than the 9/11 attacks, and say far more about the troubled state of the western psyche. My novels offer an extreme hypothesis which future events may disprove — or confirm. They're in the nature of long-range weather forecasts.

Nature , Future , Weather

“In the future, violence would clearly become a valuable form of social cement.”

J. G. Ballard book High-Rise

Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 8

Future

“The advanced societies of the future will not be governed by reason. They will be driven by irrationality, by competing systems of psychopathology.”

J. G. Ballard

As quoted in J. G. Ballard Quotes : Does The Future Have A Future? (2004) edited by V. Vale and Mike Ryan

Future

“In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape.”

J. G. Ballard book High-Rise

Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 8

People , Education , Intelligence , Sense

“Even the run-down nature of the high-rise was a model of the world into which the future was carrying them, a landscape beyond technology where everything was either derelict or, more ambiguously, recombined in unexpected but more meaningful ways. Laing pondered this — sometimes he found it difficult not to believe that they were living in a future that had already taken place, and was now exhausted.”

J. G. Ballard book High-Rise

Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 16

World , Way , Nature , Future

“The residents had eliminated both past and future, and for all their activity, they existed in a civilized and eventless world.”

J. G. Ballard book Running Wild

Running Wild (1988)

World , Past , Future

“Without realizing it, [the architect] had given these people a means of escaping into a new life, and a pattern of social organization that would become the paradigm of all future high-rise blocks.”

J. G. Ballard book High-Rise

Source: High-Rise (1975), Ch. 3

Life , People , Future

“For me the intentions of background music are openly political, and an example of how political power is constantly shifting from the ballot box into areas where the voter has nowhere to mark his ballot paper. The most important political choices in the future will probably never be consciously exercised. I'm intrigued by the way some background music is surprisingly aggressive, especially that played on consumer complaint phone lines and banks, airplanes and phone companies themselves, with strident non-rhythmic and arms-length sequences that are definitely not user-friendly.”

J. G. Ballard

As quoted in Elevator Music (1994) by Joseph Lanza

Music , Way , Exercises , Future