Michel Foucault Quotes

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Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Birthname

AKA Michel Foucault

Birthplace Poitiers, France

Death June 25, 1984

Manner of Death Natural Causes

Educated At Lycée Henri-IV, University Of Paris, École Normale Supérieure

Nationality France

Occupations Professor, Historian, Psychologist, Sociologist, Literary Critic

Religion Agnosticism

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Total quotes (28)

I seek out in reflection those things that have never been thought or imagined.

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

Inventing The World Creating New Possibilities New Ideas newness Innovation

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What I am attentive to is the fact that every human relation is to some degree a power relation. We move in a world of perpetual strategic relations. Every power relation is not bad in itself, but it is a fact that always involves danger.

— Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings, 1977-1984

Power Dynamics Power Almost Always Involves Oppression The Will To Power

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Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same.

— Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture

Inquisition Curiosity Demand Growth

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Politics should not subsume your whole life as if you were a hot rabbit.

— Michel Foucault, A last interview with French philosopher Michel Foucault

Overcoming Political Addictions Political Landscapes

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The idea of justice in itself is an idea which in effect has been invented and put to work in different types of societies as an instrument of a certain political and economic power or as a weapon against that power.

— Michel Foucault, Human Nature: Justice versus Power

Justice Justice is Violence Justice As A Power Apparatus

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I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.

— Michel Foucault, Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth

Personality character being somebody else

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Sometimes I fear that the young are so impressed with change and revolution, with the instrumental nature of political ideology, that they ignore what’s going on in the present.

— Michel Foucault, A last interview with French philosopher Michel Foucault

Romantic Notions of Revolution

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What I would like to grasp is the system of limits and exclusion which we practice without knowing it; I would like to make the cultural unconscious apparent.

— Michel Foucault, Partisan Review Interview

Understanding Where We Limit Things Breaking Barriers Bringing The Unconscious to the Forefront

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I’m not a prophet; I’m not an organizer; I don’t want to tell people what they should do. I’m not going to tell them, this is good for you, this is bad for you!

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

Against Ethics No Moralizing Distinctions of Good and Bad

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The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collective work.

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

What is Good?We Invent Reality Spontaneity of Ethical Decisions

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I say study history, not the future. Study history to prepare for the future.

— Michel Foucault, A last interview with French philosopher Michel Foucault

History The Past Is The Future Conservation

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Search for what is good and strong and beautiful in your society and elaborate from there.

— Michel Foucault, A last interview with French philosopher Michel Foucault

Don't Be Negative Against Negativity Celebrate Don't Criticize Find Joy

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Wise is the man who can see that there is a madness in all claims by reason to have found an absolute truth.

— Michel Foucault, History of Madness

Logic Against Logic There Is No Truth The Only Truth Is The Lack of Truth

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I try to analyze a real situation in its various complexities, with the goal of allowing refusal, and curiosity, and innovation.

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

My Philosophy The Great Game of Filters Work Strategies Game Thoughts Conceptual Disruption Quote of the Moment

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The student is put outside of society, on a campus. Furthermore he is excluded while being transmitted a knowledge traditional in nature, obsolete, 'academic' and not directly tied to the needs and problems of today.

— Michel Foucault, Partisan Review Interview

College Higher Education Campus As An Escape From Reality Campuses of Conservatism

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Develop action, thought, and desires by proliferation, juxtaposition, and disjunction, and not by subdivision and pyramidal hierarchization.

— Michel Foucault, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

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There will always be those who rebel, who resist.

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

The Night After The Revolution Rebels

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The university is no doubt little different from those systems in so-called primitive societies in which the young men are kept outside the village during their adolescence, undergoing rituals of initiation which separate them and sever all contact between then: and real, active society

— Michel Foucault, Partisan Review Interview

College Systems of Control Higher Education

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I’m not sure I know what Marxism really is.

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

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Sexual ethics requires, still and always, that the individual conform to a certain art of living which defines the aesthetic and ethical criteria of existence. But this art refers more and more to universal principles of nature or reason, which everyone must observe in the same way, whatever their social status.

— Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: The Care of Self

Bodies Organization of Bodies In Society

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One must consider all the points of fixity.

— Michel Foucault, Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual

Perspectivism Seeing With Many Eyes

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I am a moralist, insofar as I believe that one of the tasks, one of the meanings of human existence—the source of human freedom—is never to accept anything as definitive, untouchable, obvious, or immobile. No aspect of reality should be allowed to become a definitive and inhuman law for us.

— Michel Foucault, Hear Michel Foucault Deliver His Lecture on “Truth and Subjectivity” at UC Berkeley, In English (1980)

Against Seeing Things As Permeant Make Reality Flexible

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Free political action from all unitary and totalizing paranoia.

— Michel Foucault, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

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If you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing.

— Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison

abnormal Sick Mental Health

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The book often leads one to believe it is all fun and games, when something essential is taking place, something of extreme seriousness: the tracking down of all varieties of fascism, from the enormous ones that surround and crush us to the petty ones that constitute the tyrannical bitterness of our everyday lives.

— Michel Foucault, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

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