Top 20 Quotes by 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.

A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.

The skyscraper establishes the block, the block creates the street, the street offers itself to man.

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.

The New is not a fashion, it is a value.

What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

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.

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

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.