Quotes from Mythologies

Roland Barthes ·  160 pages

Rating: (11.1K votes)


“We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“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, quote from Mythologies


“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, quote from Mythologies


“A light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“To see someone who does not see is the best way to be intensely aware of what he does not see.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies



“Justice is always ready to lend you a spare brain in order to condemn you without a second thought”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“This book has two determinants: on the one hand, an ideological critique of the language of so-called mass culture; on the other, an initial semiological dismantling of that language: I had just read Saussure and emerged with the conviction that by treating “collective representations” as sign systems one might hope to transcend pious denunciation and instead account in detail for the mystification which transforms petit bourgeois culture into a universal nature.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“[T]he most repugnant bastard there is: the bastard-octopus.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip character”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“In wrestling, nothing exists unless it exists totally, there is no symbol, no allusion, everything is given exhaustively; leaving nothing in shadow, the gesture severs every parasitical meaning and ceremonially presents the public with a pure and full signification, three dimensional, like Nature. Such emphasis is nothing but the popular and ancestral image of the perfect intelligibility of reality. What is enacted by wrestling, then, is an ideal intelligence of things, a euphoria of humanity, raised for a while out of the constitutive ambiguity of everyday situations and installed in a panoramic vision of a univocal Nature, in which signs finally correspond to causes without obstacle, without evasion, and without contradiction.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies



“To instil into the Established Order the complacent portrayal of its drawbacks has nowadays become a paradoxical but incontrovertible means of exalting it.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“A film, The Lost Continent, throws a clear light on the current myth of exoticism. It is a big documentary on 'the East', the pretext of which is some undefined ethnographic expedition, evidently false, incidentally, led by three or four Italians into the Malay archipelago. The film is euphoric, everything in it is easy, innocent. Our explorers are good fellows, who fill up their leisure time with child-like amusements: they play with their mascot, a little bear (a mascot is indispensable in all expeditions: no film about the polar region is without its tame seal, no documentary on the tropics is without its monkey), or they comically upset a dish of spaghetti on the deck. Which means that these good people, anthropologists though they are, don't bother much with historical or sociological problems. Penetrating the Orient never means more for them than a little trip in a boat, on an azure sea, in an essentially sunny country. And this same Orient which has today become the political centre of the world we see here all flattened, made smooth and gaudily coloured like an old-fashioned postcard.
The device which produces irresponsibility is clear: colouring the world is always a means of denying it (and perhaps one should at this point begin an inquiry into the use of colour in the cinema). Deprived of all substance, driven back into colour, disembodied through the very glamour of the 'images', the Orient is ready for the spiriting away which the film has in store for it. What with the bear as a mascot and the droll spaghetti, our studio anthropologists will have no trouble in postulating an Orient which is exotic in form, while being in reality profoundly similar to the Occident, at least the Occident of spiritualist thought. Orientals have religions of their own? Never mind, these variations matter very little compared to the basic unity of idealism. Every rite is thus made at once specific and eternal, promoted at one stroke into a piquant spectacle and a quasi-Christian symbol.
...If we are concerned with fisherman, it is not the type of fishing which is whown; but rather, drowned in a garish sunset and eternalized, a romantic essense of the fisherman, presented not as a workman dependent by his technique and his gains on a definite society, but rather as the theme of an eternal condition, in which man is far away and exposed to the perils of the sea, and woman weeping and praying at home. The same applies to refugees, a long procession of which is shown at the beginning, coming down a mountain: to identify them is of course unnecessary: they are eternal essences of refugees, which it is in the nature of the East to produce.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


“Robar a un hombre su lenguaje en nombre del propio lenguaje: todos los crímenes legales comienzan así.”
― Roland Barthes, quote from Mythologies


About the author

Roland Barthes
Born place: in Cherbourg, France
Born date November 12, 1915
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Brain: You don’t want this.
Hormones: Dude, this is EXACTLY what I want.
B: No, not like this—she's wasted.
H: What's your point?
B: She won't remember this, and if she does, she'll be angry.
H: Do you see where her hand is? God, that feels good. Can't you feel that?
B: She's drunk. You can't do this. It's wrong
H: I want to do this.
B: Really? You want to go to school and say you scored with Bethany Milbury when she was so drunk she barely knew her name?
H:
H:
H: You're an asshole. I hate you.
B: She needs to eat something and drink some water. Don't let her drink anymore beer.
H:
H: Yeah, I know
B: She'll love you for taking care of her. She'll love that you respected her.
H: Five more minutes? Just five?
B: Now.
H: I can't believe you're making me do this.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Twisted


“Right now, AJ. I wanna pin you against the wall and fuck you hard enough to rattle the stalls. Then I want to bend you over the railing’ and take you from behind, sinkin’ my teeth into that spot at the base of your neck that makes you scream my name.”
AJ swallowed. “Um. Let’s start with just one and work our way down the wish list, okay?”
― Lorelei James, quote from Cowgirl Up and Ride


“What Gibbie made of Mr. Sclater's prayers, either in congregational or family devotion, I am at some loss to imagine. Beside his memories of the direct fervid outpouring and appeal of Janet, in which she seemed to talk face to face with God, they must have seemed to him like the utterances of some curiously constructed wooden automaton, doing its best to pray, without any soul to be saved, any weakness to be made strong, any doubt to be cleared, any hunger to be filled. What can be less like religion than the prayers of a man whose religion is his profession, and who, if he were not "in the church," would probably never pray at all?”
― George MacDonald, quote from Sir Gibbie


“You say halfer as if it's a terrible thing," he said. "But everyone I've ever known has been a halfer; if old enough t-to be called an adult, then ch-childish in their prejudices. All of us in the world really, I take to be h-halfers- half human, half divine, halfers of the best sort. I'd think the s-same must be true for the people of Wonderland, that there's...there is no such thing as s-someone who is not a halfer, or even a quarter-er, if you'll allow me the inelegant term.”
― Frank Beddor, quote from ArchEnemy


“Yet they are unmoved when told of the cruel blow that fortune has dealt them, happy to see out their days on this unknown and unspoiled atoll. They will tell you that the view from their windows is infinitely more magnificent than Manhattan's glittering skyline.”
― Giles Milton, quote from Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History


Interesting books

Calvin and Hobbes
(125.7K)
Calvin and Hobbes
by Bill Watterson
Isla and the Happily Ever After
(85.3K)
Isla and the Happily...
by Stephanie Perkins
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
(18.7K)
All I Really Need to...
by Robert Fulghum
Eona: The Last Dragoneye
(33.1K)
Eona: The Last Drago...
by Alison Goodman
Succubus on Top
(27.4K)
Succubus on Top
by Richelle Mead
March
(47.9K)
March
by Geraldine Brooks

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.