Michel Foucault Quotes

Whatever coast he's on, a man should be himself. I don't write in any particular idiom, I write Charles Mingus.

Style is originality; fashion is fascism. The two are eternally and unalterably opposed.

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.

Fitting in is boring. But it takes you nearly your whole life to work that out.

I didn't try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

I tried to be different; I didn't want to be like everybody else.

I wanted what I was doing to be really true to me and my tastes. That's what 'Worlds' was, me taking a break from what I was doing and doing something that was honest, authentic and real.

Be stupid, be dumb, be funny, if that's who you are. Don't try to be someone that society wants you to be; that's stupid. So be yourself.

After all, the appeal to stop being yourself, even for a little while, is very great

I don't have any desire to rebel and be something totally different from what I am.

To conform is to lose your soul

Express who you are in a world where everyone is the same.

The greatest fear people have is that of being themselves. They want to be 50 Cent or someone else. They do what everyone else does even if it doesn’t fit where and who they are. But you get nowhere that way; your energy is weak and no one pays attention to you. You’re running away from the one thing that you own – what makes you different. I lost that fear. And once I felt the power that I had by showing the world I didn’t care about being like other people, I could never go back.

There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist.

Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.

Wasn't the whole point of being an artist, or at least part of it, that you didn't have to wear a tie?

What makes a girl a girl? What makes a guy a guy? Do you have to be what they want you to be? Or do you stop and listen to that voice inside you? I know who I am. I'm Petra West. And I'm a girl. You want me to sleep somewhere else, fine. Whatever. But I'm not going to pretend to be somebody I'm not. I've done enough of that.

We all have to fight to maintain our unique style and taste in a world that would have us conform.

Don't know which one is worse, doing your own thing or just being cool.

Having to be different is the same trap as having to be the same.

When you're always trying to conform to the norm, you lose your uniqueness, which can be the foundation for your greatness.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I'd rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me.

I'm not going to be able to play it like somebody else.

An easy way to find your own style is to exaggerate yourself a bit and then find a balance.

What Hollywood truly wants is for people to be themselves. I think what it's designed for is to kind of turn people into something and just make them saleable. But what it really stands for, what it really loves, are people who are unafraid to be themselves, and as you can see, these are people who are excelling in their careers.