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Quote by Michel Foucault

“It is pointless to ask: Why then is sex so secret? What is this force that so long reduced it to silence and has only recently relaxed its hold somewhat, allowing us to question it perhaps, but always in the context of and through its repression? In reality, this question, so often repeated nowadays, is but the recent form of a considerable affirmation and a secular prescription: there is where the truth is; go see if you can uncover it. [...] It is reasonable therefore to ask first of all: What is this injunction? Why this great chase after the truth of sex, the truth in sex?”

Quote by Michel Foucault

Author

Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher known for his critical analysis of knowledge, power, and discourse. His work covered a wide range of topics, including madness, prisons, sexuality, archaeology of knowledge, and biopolitics. Foucault's ideas have had a profound impact on postmodernism, critical theory, and cultural studies. more

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“In addition to conformity as a way to relieve the anxiety springing from separateness, another factor of contemporary life must be considered: the role of the work routine and the pleasure routine. Man becomes a 'nine to fiver', he is part of the labour force, or the bureaucratic force of clerks and managers. He has little initiative, his tasks are prescribed by the organisation of the work; there is even little difference between those high up on the ladder and those on the bottom. They all perform tasks prescribed by the whole structure of the organisation, at a prescribed speed, and in a prescribed manner. Even the feelings are prescribed: cheerfulness, tolerance, reliability, ambition, and an ability to get along with everybody without friction. Fun is routinised in similar, although not quite as drastic ways. Books are selected by the book clubs, movies by the film and theatre owners and the advertising slogans paid for by them; the rest is also uniform: the Sunday ride in the car, the television session, the card game, the social parties. From birth to death, from Monday to Monday, from morning to evening - all activities are routinised, and prefabricated. How should a man caught up in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and separateness?”

“He loves hot dogs—obsessively loves hot dogs. He'd eat a hot dog every day for the rest of his life if he could. Isn't it funny that this is the kind of information that makes a person unique? That they love to eat a stick of meat in a round bed of bread. Absurd. When you grow up, Bean, maybe you will love trains. Or brussels sprouts. And we will all marvel over this thing that makes you you.”

“Естер без перебільшення зіткнувся в ній зі «слабоумством», поглибленим до меж хворобливої жаги перемоги, і «дешевим розрахунком», втіленим у якесь неотесане хуторянство, такою глибоко пекельною сумішшю грубості, нечулості, шкідницької ненависті й буйного хамства, проти якого він десятиліттями виявлявся безсилим.”

“Here there is no doubt that timidity and a total lack of personal initiative have always been regarded among us as the chiefest and best sign of the practical man—and are so regarded even now. But why blame only ourselves—if this opinion can be considered an accusation? Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the best recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.”

“What would the differences be between the world in which I existed (however briefly) and a different world where almost everything is exactly the same, except in this parallel universe I never existed? It is all those differences, however minuscule, that make up my existence.”