Michel Foucault Quotes

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.

I'm interested in time, fame, death, beauty, truth, all those things.

We all die at the end, but does that nullify everything? Would most people rather say, "I wish I hadn't been born?" Once you're born you'll have to die, now is that funny or sad?

I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant

Nothing is absolute, with the debatable exceptions of this statement and death.

I think I want to talk about life from the point of view of death.

I know all human beings will be successful. How do I know? They all die.

We all have two things in common, no matter who we are: We were born and we are going to die.

The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.

I was fascinated by mortality. Most people are, even if they don't admit it.

Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.

I first started asking big questions when I was 12, and by big questions, I mean, 'Why are we here? What is this business? We're alive for a few short decades and then poof, we're out of here.'

'Hamlet' is one of the most dangerous things ever set down on paper. All the big, unknowable questions like what it is to be a human being; the difference between sanity and insanity; the meaning of life and death; what's real and not real. All these subjects can literally drive you mad.

Humans may be the only creatures on Earth who spend significant time thinking about the fact that someday their lives will end.

It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal.

To be, or not to be, that is the question.

Who does understand life?

We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

One is born, one lives, one dies. What death is, I don't know.

We are made to be immortal, and yet we die. It's horrible, it can't be taken seriously

Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.

Among human beings there is no greater banality than death. Second in order, because it is possible to die without being born, comes birth, and next comes marriage.