Michel Foucault Quotes

Politically, economically and philosophically the motive of self-interest not only is but must...and ought to be the mainspring of human conduct...

In a certain sense all men are historians.

History is of all subjects the one which is most engaged with people's perceptions of themselves, identity, politics, all those things which shape the modern world.

The conservative "thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature. In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.

Vivere est cogitare. (To think is to live)

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.

Every Man being conscious to himself, That he thinks, and that which his Mind is employ'd about whilst thinking, being the Ideas, that are there, 'tis past doubt, that Men have in their Minds several Ideas, such as are those expressed by the words, Whiteness, Hardness, Sweetness, Thinking, Motion, Man, Elephant, Army, Drunkenness, and others: It is in the first place then to be inquired, How he comes by them? I know it is a received Doctrine, That Men have native Ideas, and original Characters stamped upon their Minds, in their very first Being.

The human mind may perceive truth only through thinking, as is clear from Augustine.

Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don't. Usually I think about my condominium.

David Boaz has been my guide to the history, economics, and politics of freedom for years.

As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?

They do not think, therefore they are not.

Thought can never be compared with action, but when it awakens in us the image of truth.

I think that the best movies are made, not from a point of view that depends on your personal history, whether it's the color of your skin or the politics that you had or the place that you come from, but from a point of view of an understanding of human nature, an understanding of history, and an understanding of what motivates people.

The way we see things is the source of the way we think or the way we act

It's not my fault if reality is Marxist

Human intellect is incurably abstract.

Nothing remains beautiful and interesting except thought, because the thought is the life.

Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought.

Man is the product of two forces, action and reaction, which make him think.

Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.

Those people upstairs think that Karl Marx was somebody who wrote a good anti-trust law.

Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.

Most economics that is taught in college and universities today projects itself as a value-neutral science. This claim has always been open to question, but I think it's especially in doubt today.