Roland Barthes Quotes
Roland Barthes was a French literary theorist, semiotician, and essayist. His Mythologies submitted the codes of everyday French life to a structural reading, while Elements of Semiology and S/Z developed and then contested the structuralist project. The quotes below are attributed to Roland Barthes, organized by topic.
Browse Roland Barthes by topic
Roland Barthes on Happiness
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“The Pleasure of the Text (1975)”
Encratic language (the language produced and spread under the protection of power) is statutorily a language of repetition; all official institutions of language are repeating machines: schools, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words. -
“The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.”
La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens. -
“Modern," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)”
La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens. -
“Sentence," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975)”
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 on Knowledge
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“La forme bâtarde de la culture de masse est la répétition honteuse: on répète les contenus, les schèmes idéologiques, le gommage des contradictions, mais on varie les formes superficielles: toujours des livres, des émissions, des films nouveaux, des faits divers, mais toujours le même sens.”
The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions—these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning. | Modern," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975) -
“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!”
Sentence," in The Pleasure of the Text (1975) -
“The bourgeoisie is defined as the social class which does not want to be named .”
p. 138
Roland Barthes on Love
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“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other.”
Talking," in A Lover's Discourse (1977) -
Attributed to Roland Barthes:
“What love lays bare in me is energy.”
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Attributed to Roland Barthes:
“I cannot classify the other, for the other is, precisely, Unique, the singular Image which has miraculously come to correspond to the speciality of my desire.”
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“Talking," in A Lover's Discourse (1977)”
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 on Mind
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“Variant translation: The Text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed. It would be futile to try to separate out materially works from texts.”
From Work to Text (1971)
Roland Barthes on Nature
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“Bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of a natural order—the further the bourgeois class propagates its representations, the more naturalized they become.”
p. 140
Roland Barthes on Politics
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“Encratic language (the language produced and spread under the protection of power) is statutorily a language of repetition; all official institutions of language are repeating machines: schools, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words.”
The Pleasure of the Text (1975)
Roland Barthes on Time
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“Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all history. In it, history evaporates.”
Mythologies(1957) | p. 151
Roland Barthes on Truth
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Attributed to Roland Barthes:
“The death of the author is the birth of the reader.”
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Attributed to Roland Barthes:
“Literature is the question minus the answer.”
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Attributed to Roland Barthes:
“The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture.”