Michel Foucault Quotes
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And now, if we try to assign a value, in and of itself, outside its relations to the dream and with error, to classical unreason, we must understand it not as reason diseased, or as reason lost or alienated, but quite simply as reason dazzled.
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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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What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?
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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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Madness, in its wild, untamable words, proclaims its own meaning; in its chimeras, it utters its secret truth.
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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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Are the prisons overpopulated, or is the population over-imprisoned ?
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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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Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.
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The soul is the prison of the body.
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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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Power is everywhere...because it comes from everywhere.