Quotes by Barthes, Roland




Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 March 25, 1980) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher and semiotician..


"There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it."

Barthes, Roland on alienation
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"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!"

Barthes, Roland on interviews    Share

"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."

Barthes, Roland on language
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"All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology."

Barthes, Roland on language    Share

"There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one's good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment."

Barthes, Roland on liberals    Share

"The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event."

Barthes, Roland on acting and actors    Share

"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."

Barthes, Roland on literature    Share

"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."

Barthes, Roland on love
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"Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion."

Barthes, Roland on myth    Share

"The New is not a fashion, it is a value."

Barthes, Roland on novelty    Share

"The photographic image... is a message without a code."

Barthes, Roland on photography    Share

"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."

Barthes, Roland on pleasure    Share

"I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object."

Barthes, Roland on automobiles    Share

"The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition... always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning."

Barthes, Roland on popular culture
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"I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient."

Barthes, Roland on power    Share

"What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth."

Barthes, Roland on sarcasm    Share

"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."

Barthes, Roland on speech    Share

"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."

Barthes, Roland on sports    Share

"Wine is a part of society because it provides a basis not only for a morality but also for an environment; it is an ornament in the slightest ceremonials of French daily life, from the snack to the feast, from the conversation at the local caf? to the speech at a formal dinner."

Barthes, Roland on wine    Share

"Historically and politically, the petit-bourgeois is the key to the century. The bourgeois and proletariat classes have become abstractions: the petite-bourgeoisie, in contrast, is everywhere, you can see it everywhere, even in the areas of the bourgeois and the proletariat, what's left of them."

Barthes, Roland on class    Share

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