Roland Barthes Quotes


Literature is the question minus the answer. Roland Barthes Answer 145
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning. Roland Barthes Society 143
Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive. Roland Barthes Conversation 132
Literature is like phosphorus it shines with its maximum brilliance and the moment when it attempts to die. Roland Barthes Literature 108
Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. Roland Barthes Myths 106
The photographic image... is a message without a code. Roland Barthes Photography 99
I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient. Roland Barthes Power 94
There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque. Roland Barthes Sports 80
As a general rule desire is always marketable we dont do anything but sell buy exchange desires. . . . And I think of Bloys words there is nothing perfectly beautiful except what is invisible and above all unbuyable. Roland Barthes Desire 76
The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized! Roland Barthes Interviews 69
Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it. Roland Barthes Books 68
What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth. Roland Barthes Cynicism 68
The incapacity to name is a good symptom of disturbance. Roland Barthes Photography 65
If I had to create a god I would lend him a slow understanding a kind of dripbydrip understanding of problems. People who understand quickly frighten me. Roland Barthes Language 63
Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure. Roland Barthes Pleasure 63
The New is not a fashion, it is a value. Roland Barthes Fashion 59
There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it. Roland Barthes Society 58
To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished. Roland Barthes Love 50
The text you write must prove to me that it desires me. This proof exists it is writing. Writing is the science of the various blisses of language its Kama Sutra this science has but one treatise writing itself. Roland Barthes Writers 49
Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering. Roland Barthes Grief 46
Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. Roland Barthes Language 46
To eat steak rare… represents both a nature and a morality. Roland Barthes Nature 44
The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture. Roland Barthes Language 44
We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense. Roland Barthes Intelligence 43
The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event. Roland Barthes Actors 42
To whom could I put this question with any hope of an answer Does being able to live without someone you loved mean you loved her less than you thought... Roland Barthes Mourning 40
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. Roland Barthes Uncategorized 40
The istudiumi is ultimately always coded the ipunctum is not... Roland Barthes Photography 40
Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula. Roland Barthes Knowledge 39
The photograph, for all its promised immortality, always hinted at death. Roland Barthes Death 38
When we define the Photograph as a motionless image this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move it means that they do not iemergei do not ileavei they are anesthetized and fastened down like butterflies. Roland Barthes Photography 35
Dont bleach language savour it instead. Stroke it gently or even groom it but dont purify it. Roland Barthes Language 34
In an initial period Photography in order to surprise photographs the notable but soon by a familiar reversal it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The anything whatever then becomes the sophisticated acme of value. Roland Barthes Photography 33
A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see. Roland Barthes Invisible 30
Today there is no symbolic compensation for old age no recognition of a specific value wisdom perceptiveness experience vision. Roland Barthes Age 29
The art of living has no history it does not evolve the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures nothing but mutations. Roland Barthes Pleasure 28
Above all do not attempt to be exhaustive. Roland Barthes Advice 28

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Roland Barthes Quotes

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