Michel Foucault Quotes


"What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Art, Life, Society, Fact)

"The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Love, Power, Behavior, Causes, Desire, Fascism)

"Prison continues, on those who are entrusted to it, a work begun elsewhere, which the whole of society pursues on each individual through innumerable mechanisms of discipline."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Society, Work, Discipline, Prison)

"Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Power, Society, Strength, Name)

"Justice must always question itself, just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Society, Work, Justice, Question)

"In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Power)

"If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Age, Power, Knowledge, Reason, Repression, Sexuality, Will)

"Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Authority, Conscience, Freedom)

"As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Thought, End, Invention, Man)

"As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Thought, End, Invention, Man)