Roland Barthes
» Acting and Actors » “The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.”
» Alcohol and Alcoholism » “Other countries drink to get drunk, and this is accepted by everyone; in France, drunkenness is a consequence, never an intention. A drink is felt as the spinning out of a pleasure, not as the necessary cause of an effect which is sought: wine is not only a philter, it is also the leisurely act of drinking.”
» Alienation » “There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.”
» Automobiles » “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.”
» Class » “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.”
» Interviews » “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!”
» Language » “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.”
» Language » “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.”
» Liberals » “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.”
» Literature » “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.”
» Love » “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.”
» Myth » “Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.”
» Novelty » “The New is not a fashion, it is a value.”
» Passion » “To hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don’t want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other.”
» Photography » “The photographic image… is a message without a code.”
» Pleasure » “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.”
» Popular Culture » “The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition… always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.”
» Sarcasm » “What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.”
» Speech » “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.”
» Sports » “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.”
» Wine » “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
