Roland Barthes – Quotes Crazy

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. – Roland Barthes

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

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

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, whats left of them. – Roland Barthes

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. – Roland Barthes

Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion. – Roland Barthes

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

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

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event. – Roland Barthes

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

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. – Roland Barthes

The photographic image… is a message without a code. – Roland Barthes

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

The New is not a fashion, it is a value. – Roland Barthes

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

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

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

Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula. – Roland Barthes

To dope the racer is as criminal, as sacrilegious, as trying to imitate God; it is stealing from God the privilege of the spark. – Roland Barthes

Literature is the question minus the answer. – Roland Barthes