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To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.

Roland Barthes

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

Classification Forget Language Oppression Power Speech
Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle.
ROLAND BARTHES

Community Family Instrument Television
I encounter millions of bodies in my life; of these millions, I may desire some hundreds; but of these hundreds, I love only one.
ROLAND BARTHES

Body Desire Life Love Myself
To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.
ROLAND BARTHES

Patience Power Wait
Why is it better to last than to burn?
ROLAND BARTHES

Better Burn Last Myself
Literature is the question minus the answer.
ROLAND BARTHES

Answer Literature Question
Painting can feign reality without having seen it.
ROLAND BARTHES

Myself Painting Reality See
The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.
ROLAND BARTHES

Art History Live Mutation Pleasure
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. The other is the figure of my truth, and cannot be imprisoned in any stereotype (which is the truth of others).
ROLAND BARTHES

Classification Desire Myself Speciality Stereotype Truth Unique
The Ventoux is a god of Evil, to which sacrifices must be made. It never forgives weakness and extracts an unfair tribute of suffering.
ROLAND BARTHES

Evil Forgiveness God Ourselves Suffering Weakness
Architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.
ROLAND BARTHES

Architecture Convenience Dreams Function Instrument
In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The ‘anything whatever’ then becomes the sophisticated acme of value.
ROLAND BARTHES

Notable Order Photography Sophistication Value
Each of us has his own rhythm of suffering.
ROLAND BARTHES

Hard Time Ourselves Suffering
Every object in the world can pass from a closed, silent existence to an oral state, open to appropriation by society, for there is no law, whether natural or not, which forbids talking about things
ROLAND BARTHES

Existence Law Natural Object Silence Society State
Who speaks is not who writes, and who writes is not who is.
ROLAND BARTHES

Literature Poet Talk Writing
I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me.
ROLAND BARTHES

Interesting Language Myself Seduce Wound

To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.

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To make someone wait: the constant prerogative of all power.

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