Roland Barthes Quotes

What we hear strikes the mind with less force than what we see.

The sight of a man hath the force of a Lyon.

Force, punishment, and violence are patriarchy's answer to conflicts and social problems. Patriarchy finds its ultimate expression in war.

Jealousy is a painful passion; yet without some share of it, the agreeable affection of love has difficulty to subsist in its full force and violence.

If you do not surrender, I shall be forced to shoot you through the head with a rather large bullet.

In times of great necessity, violence is indispensable.

No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.

The elephant is never won by anger; nor must that man who would reclaim a lion take him by the teeth.

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

John Lewis we all know was beaten terribly, almost to an inch of his life, opened doors that will never be closed, although there are forces that are attempting to close those doors.

You use force, you create fear. Fear destroys trust. Trust is the basis of harmony. The hardliner believes harmony and unity can be brought by force. That's totally unscientific, totally wrong.

If someone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them, and stab them in the heart.

When you use force, people get hurt, and when you kill people, their relatives don't like it. And usually war has some unanticipated consequences so it's something you shouldn't launch into, on the expectation that this is going to rally the nation. This is not like 'Friday Night Lights'.

Argument closes off the doors of the senses. It always masks violence. Continued too long, argument always leads to violence.

War is the rule of force, and peace is the reign of law.

Necessity is a violent school-mistress.

The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight.

It is well for his peace that the saint goes to his martyrdom. He is spared the sight of the horror of his harvest.

Continuously, we have to fight to defeat the primitive tendency towards the glorification of arms, the adulation of force, born of the illusion that injustice can be perpetuated by the capacity to kill, or that disputes are necessarily best resolved by resort to violent means.

A nation's not a child, for God's sake. ... It's like a wild horse you tame by breaking it. Or a fiery woman you slap till she sees sense and warms your bed.

Sight is a slick and overbearing autocrat, trumpeting its prodigal knowledge and perceptions so forcefully that it drowns out the other, subtler senses.

When the religious principles, like the philosophical, are translated into reality, sometimes the reality forces violence on you, and there is no escape from it, and then I don't think it's something you should try to hide your face from.

We'll start firing till they drop or we drop.

Because nothing says flattery like a gun to the head.