Michel Foucault Quotes
Michel Foucault was a 20th-century French philosopher, historian, and social theorist, one of the most influential figures of post-war continental philosophy. His major works, including Madness and Civilisation, The Order of Things, Discipline and Punish, and the multi-volume History of Sexuality, traced the historical conditions under which categories such as madness, illness, criminality, and sexuality came to take their modern forms. The quotes below are attributed to Michel Foucault, organized by topic.
Browse Michel Foucault by topic
Michel Foucault on Freedom
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“I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am.”
Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (25 October 1982) -
Attributed to Michel Foucault:
“Visibility is a trap.”
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“Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are.”
p. 785
Michel Foucault on Knowledge
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Attributed to Michel Foucault:
“Knowledge is not for knowing: knowledge is for cutting.”
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Attributed to Michel Foucault:
“There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine.”
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“We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another.”
Michel Foucault, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020) -
“Michel Foucault, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)”
We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another. -
“[T]ruly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.”
Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France , 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith -
“Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France , 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith”
[T]ruly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his t -
“The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon)”
Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write. -
“Quand j’étudie les mécanismes de pouvoir, j’essaie d’étudier leur spécificité… Je n’admets ni la notion de maîtrise ni l’universalité de la loi. Au contraire, je m’attache à saisir des mécanismes d’exercise effectif de pouvoir ; et je le fais parce que ceux qui sont insérés dans ces relations de pouvoir, qui y sont impliqués peuvent, dans leurs actions, dans leur résistance et leur rébellion, leur”
Dits et Écrits 1954–1988 (1976) Vol. II, 1976–1988 edited by Daniel Defert and François Ewald, p. 911-912
Michel Foucault on Mind
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“The soul is the prison of the body.”
[L]'âme, prison du corps. -
“Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.”
As quoted by David Macey , The lives of Michel Foucault (1993) p. 177. Citing 'Les Intellectuels et le Pouvoir', Le'Arc 49, 1972, pp. 3-10. Discussion with Gilles Deleuze, (4 March 1972). Reprinted, Le Nouvel Observateur , (8 May 1972) pp. 68-70. Tr. 'Intellectuals and Power', Language, Counter-Memory, Practice , pp. 205-17.
Michel Foucault on Politics
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Attributed to Michel Foucault:
“Where there is power, there is resistance.”
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Attributed to Michel Foucault:
“Modern man is much sooner judged than seen.”
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Attributed to Michel Foucault:
“The strategic adversary is fascism: the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behaviour.”
Michel Foucault on Time
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“Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual", interview in History of the Present 4 (Spring 1988)”
Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I
Michel Foucault on Virtue
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“Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.”
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon)