Michel Foucault

Power structures, postmodernism

Contemporary influential 151 sayings

Sayings by Michel Foucault

Where there is power, there is resistance.

1976 — The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The soul is the prison of the body.

1975 — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Strange & Unusual Confirmed

People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.

1983 — Interview with Alain Badiou
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to the bureaucrats and the police to see that our papers are in order.

1969 — The Archaeology of Knowledge
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The most important thing for me is to try to understand how things work.

1980 — Interview
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere.

1976 — The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The greatest fear of a man is to be found out.

1975 — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.

1977 — Language, Counter-Memory, Practice
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

What is prison? It is a machine for grinding out delinquents.

1975 — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

Is it not possible for the judge to be wrong?

1975 — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

Madness is the absence of an oeuvre.

1961 — Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The role of the intellectual is not to tell others what they should do.

1978 — Interview
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

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.

1976 — The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The more one is punished, the more one resists.

1975 — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

To be transgressive is to be free.

1963 — Preface to Transgression
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The greatest danger for the present age is that we may lose our sense of humor.

1978 — Interview
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

Our society is not a society of spectacle, but of surveillance.

1975 — Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

I am not what I am, I am what I do.

1980 — Interview
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The role of philosophy is to question everything.

1978 — Interview
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable

The discourse of truth is not always the discourse of freedom.

1983 — Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia
Strange & Unusual Unverifiable