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Actors, Acting
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The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.
-Roland Barthes
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Alcohol/Alcoholism
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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.
-Roland Barthes
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Alienation
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There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it.
-Roland Barthes
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Authors & Writing
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To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.
-Roland Barthes
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Automobiles
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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
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Books
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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
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Class
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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.
-Roland Barthes
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Conversation
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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
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Cynicism
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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
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Fashion
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The New is not a fashion, it is a value.
-Roland Barthes
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Interviews
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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!
-Roland Barthes
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Language
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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
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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.
-Roland Barthes
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Liberalism
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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.
-Roland Barthes
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Love
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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
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Myths, Mythology
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Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflexion.
-Roland Barthes
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Passion
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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.
-Roland Barthes
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Photography
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The photographic image... is a message without a code.
-Roland Barthes
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Pleasure
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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
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Power
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I call the discourse of power any discourse that engenders blame, hence guilt, in its recipient.
-Roland Barthes
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Society
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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
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Sports
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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
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Wine
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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
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Books by and about Roland Barthes