Roland Barthes Quotes

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.

He was always testing you. He was always testing his power.

What is 'power' anyway? Power is an ego trip. Power is a way to rise yourself up by lowering others, and I want nothing of it.

As our power over others increases, we become less free; for to retain it, we must make ourselves its servants.

People with real power never fear of losing it. People with control think of little else.

Power is all. Another falsification; I do not tell how I gain or maintain it. I only record the ginger stroll through the vaguely fetid garden of its rewards.

Power is not a means; it is an end.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else.

When you're interviewing someone, you're in control. When you're being interviewed, you think you're in control, but you're not.

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.

I'd rather control someone than be controlled.

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it.

Politics is the art of dominating men.

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

Power protects power.

Once a person insists on how you are to think he immediately begins to insist on how you are to behave.

We lead them to believe that we are in complete control over every aspect of their lives.

Don’t you shit me George. You and I know who has the power in Alabama.

Power is insinuating. Few men are satisfied with less power than they are able to procure.

Power over a man's support is a power over his will.