We need to cut off the King´s Head: in political theory that has still to be done. Michel Foucault More Quotes by Michel Foucault More Quotes From Michel Foucault As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. Michel Foucault inventionendsmen An American professor complained that a crypto-Marxist like me was invited in the USA, and I was denounced by the press in Eastern European countries for being an accomplice of the dissidents. None of these descriptions is important by itself; taken together, on the other hand, they mean something. And I must admit that I rather like what they mean. Michel Foucault takenmeancountry 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. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for love relationships is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end. Michel Foucault writinglovebook Thought is not what inhabits a certain conduct and gives it its meaning; rather, it is what allows one to step back from this way of acting or reacting, to present it to oneself as an object of thought and to question it as to its meaning, its conditions, and its goals. Thought is freedom in relation to what one does, the motion by which one detaches from it, establishes it as an object, and reflects on it as a problem. Michel Foucault actinggoalgiving We must escape and help others to escape the two readymade formulas of the pure sexual encounter and the lovers' fusion of identities. Michel Foucault helping-othersidentitytwo The best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi. Michel Foucault loversmomentslove-is The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play). Michel Foucault political-willintelligentthinking The soul is the prison of the body. Michel Foucault prisonbodysoul I believe that political power exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they have nothing in common with the political power, and as if they are independent of it, while they are not. Michel Foucault independentexercisebelieve Visibility is a trap. Michel Foucault visibilitytraps We demand that sex speak the truth and we demand that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves wich we think we possess in our immediate consciousness. Michel Foucault demandsexthinking Madness designates the equinox between the vanity of night's hallucinations and the non-being of light's judgments. Michel Foucault vanitylightnight Sexuality is a part of our behavior. It's part of our world freedom. Sexuality is something that we ourselves create. It is our own creation, and much more than the discovery of a secret side of our desire. We have to understand that with our desires go new forms of relationships, new forms of love, new forms of creation. Sex is not a fatality; it's a possibility for creative life. It's not enough to affirm that we are gay but we must also create a gay life. Michel Foucault our-worldgaysex One thing in any case is certain: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge. Michel Foucault madnessproblemmen Believe what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic. Michel Foucault castrationsedentarybelieve In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of pirates. Michel Foucault dreamadventurecivilization What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life. Michel Foucault our-societyfactsart [Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing. Michel Foucault writingmorningbook Waiting is directed at nothing: any object that could gratify it would only efface it. Still, it is not confined to one place, it is not a resigned immobility; it has the endurance of a movement that will never end and would never promise itself the reward of rest; it does not wrap itself in interiority; all of it falls irremediably outside. Michel Foucault waitingpromisefall I belong to that generation who, as students, had before their eyes, and were limited by, a horizon consisting of Marxism, phenomenology and existentialism. For me the break was first Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a breathtaking performance. Michel Foucault generationseyewaiting
