Quotessence
Home / Authors / Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingMadnessPoliticalFormMenPeopleRelationIfsKnowsWayOrderPhilosophyDoePowerReasonSocialDiscourseInstitutionsPrisonBook

Famous Michel Foucault Quotes

“But, then, what is philosophy today—philosophical activity, I mean—if it is not the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself? In what does it consist, if not in the endeavor to know how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, instead of legitimating what is already known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it works up a case against them in the language of naive positivity.”

ThinkingPhilosophyTruthKnowingThoughtDiscourseGenealogyPositivismMichel FoucaultLegitimization
Book:The History of Sexuality, Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure
Create image

“There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect... What is philosophy today... if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?”

IfsThinkingKnowsDoePhilosophyMomentsMightTodayKnow HowKnowingPerceiveIndispensableUndertakings
Author:Michel Foucault
Create image

“[T]ruly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.”

ThinkingEndsWaitingPayRemainsAssumingDetermineAppreciationTricksPermitHegel
Book:The Archaeology of Knowledge
Create image

“I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.”

PeopleThinkingMenOpinionDangerousDangerStudentsProudActivityIntellectualMarxistNihilistDangerous Man
Book:Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
Create image

“[T]hus one should not think that desire is repressed, for the simple reason that the law is what constitutes both desire and the lack on which it is predicated. Where there is desire, the power relation is already present: an illusion, then, to denounce this relation for a repression exerted after the event.”

ThinkingShouldReasonLawDesireSimpleEventsIllusionRelationRepressionRepressed
Book:The History of Sexuality: An Introduction
Create image

“During the years 1945-1965 (I am referring to Europe), there was a certain way of thinking correctly, a certain style of politicaldiscourse, a certain ethics of the intellectual. One had to be on familiar terms with Marx, not let one's dreams stray too far from Freud.... These were therequirements that made the strange occupation of writing and speaking a measure of truth about oneself and one's time acceptable.”

ThinkingWayWritingYearsMadeDreamPoliticalCertainTermStyleStrangeIntellectualEthicsEuropeOneselfFamiliarOccupationAcceptableWay Of ThinkingPolitical CorrectnessReferring
Author:Michel Foucault
Create image

“The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).”

ThinkingWayDoePlayPoliticalRolesFieldsCitizensIntellectualEvidenceIntelligentInstitutionsAnalysisAssumptionShakesConventionalFamiliarityFormationEvaluateHabitualMouldPolitical Will
Author:Michel Foucault
Create image

“A way of life can be shared among individuals of different ages, status, and social activity. It can yield intense relations not resembling those that are institutionalized. It seems to me that a way of life can yield a culture and an ethics. To be "gay," I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the visible masks of the homosexual but to try and define and develop a way of life.”

ThinkingWayTryingDifferentSeemsAgeCultureIndividualSocialGayActivityEthicsRelationIntensePsychologicalVisibleMaskYieldTraitsHomosexualDifferent Ages
Author:Michel Foucault
Create image

“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end.”

IfsThinkingKnowsLoveFeelsWritingBookEndsAgeGamesInterestWorthwhileLove RelationshipInterest In Life
Author:Michel Foucault
Create image

“There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.”

ThinkingWorldBookIdeasEarthForceLeaderTeachStruggleImagineEventsBirthPoliticianStrongerPassionateActiveManifestBursting
Author:Michel Foucault
Create image