Michel Foucault Quotes
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The court is the bureaucracy of the law. If you bureaucratise popular justice then you give it the form of a court.
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John Boswell introduction of the concept of "gay" (in the way he defines it) provides us both with a useful instrument of research and at the same time a better comprehension of how people actually conceive of themselves and their sexual behavior.
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Madness is the absolute break with the work of art; it forms the constitutive moment of abolition, which dissolves in time the truth of the work of art.
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The practice of S/M is the creation of pleasure.... And that's why S/M is really a subculture. It's a process of invention. S/M isthe use of a strategic relationship as a source of pleasure.
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The soul is the prison of the body.
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Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an origincal affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.
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Madness, in its wild, untamable words, proclaims its own meaning; in its chimeras, it utters its secret truth.
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Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history.
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Chance does not speak essentially through words nor can it be seen in their convolution. It is the eruption of language, its sudden appearance. It's not a night twinkle with stars, an illuminated sleep, nor a drowsy vigil. It is the very edge of consciousness.
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Power is everywhere...because it comes from everywhere.
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What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?
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Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.