The Good Quote
Open menu
Quotes
Authors
Topics
More
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
#
Home
Authors
Roland Barthes
French
Critic
About the author
The photographic image... is a message without a code.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
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,
French
Critic
#Policy
#Trouble
#Being
#Ending
The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Man
What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Public
#Passion
Through the mythology of Einstein, the world blissfully regained the image of knowledge reduced to a formula.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#World
#Knowledge
#Formula
#Mythology
There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Day
#Present
#Alienation
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,
French
Critic
#Love
#Language
The New is not a fashion, it is a value.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Value
#Fashion
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,
French
Critic
#Time
#May
#Truth
#Contradiction
#Sarcasm
To eat steak rare... represents both a nature and a morality.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Nature
#Morality
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,
French
Critic
#Culture
#Books
#Repetition
#Meaning
#News
A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
For the theatre one needs long arms; it is better to have them too long than too short. An artiste with short arms can never, never make a fine gesture.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Needs
#Theatre
I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Power
#Blame
#Guilt
I have tried to be as eclectic as I possibly can with my professional life, and so far it's been pretty fun.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Life
#Fun
#Pretty
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,
French
Critic
#Forget
#Power
#Language
#Speech
#Legislation
Literature is the question minus the answer.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Question
#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.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Saying
#Trouble
#Worth
#Literature
Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.
Roland Barthes,
French
Critic
#Lie
#Myth
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,
French
Critic
#Words
#Language
#Desire