Michel Foucault Quotes

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damn thing. It only leads to violence and pain.

People, man, they love hurting people. It's not even fair.

Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn!

No one suffers so much as he [the genius] with the people, and, therefore, for the people, with whom he lives. For, in a certain sense, it is certainly only "by suffering" that a man knows. If compassion is not itself clear, abstractly conceivable or visibly symbolic knowledge, it is, at any rate, the strongest impulse for the acquisition of knowledge. It is only by suffering that the genius understands men. And the genius suffers most because he suffers with and in each and all; but he suffers most through his understanding. . . .

Human cruelty and treachery surpassed all understanding. There were no answers. Only excuses.

Man is the only animal who causes pain to others with no other object than wanting to do so.

I pity those born of the lighter side. They have no understanding of how seductive cruelty is. The music made out of screams and pleas for mercy. Mmmm. Nothing better. (Noir)

The more you know, the sadder you get.

Cruelty isn't softened by tears; it feeds on them.

Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold, that was his very heaven.

Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other.

Man hurts man, time and time again. As we drown in the wake of our power, somebody tell me why?

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

To see others suffer does one good, to make others suffer even more: this is a hard saying but an ancient, mighty, human, all-too-human principle [....] Without cruelty there is no festival.

We suffer only until we realize that we can't know anything.

Unlike other vices, cruelty, alas, is never boring.

Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others.

That experience is the parent of wisdom is an adage the truth of which is recognized by the wisest as well as the simplest of mankind.

Only the toad under the harrow knows where it pinches him.

The world laughs at another man's pain.

A hot stake is better than a cold chop.

Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.