Michel Foucault Quotes

The state is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies.

The individual mirrors in his individuation the preordained social laws of exploitation, however mediated.

Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.

Ever greater grows the mass of the proletariat, ever vaster the army of the unemployed, ever sharper the contrast between oppressors and oppressed, ever fiercer that war of classes between bourgeoisie and proletariat which divides modern society into two hostile camps and is the common characteristic of ever industrial country.

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.

I am a communist and a worker, and I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves.

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.

The proletarian woman fights hand in hand with the man of her class against capitalist society.

I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half.

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history.

The majority in every society is always the backward. The diligent are no more than thirty percent of the society. It is a natural law that the diligent breed will exploit the backward breed as best they can, like the fish at sea, where the strong eat the weak. It is inconsequential whether the diligent are capitalists and merchants, as in the bourgeois government, or whether the diligent are the managers and supervisors, the intellectuals and the allotters as in the communist government. Ultimately, the diligent will exploit the laboring backward to the best of their ability.

In Russia bureaucracy as the ruling class is master of production and produce, and the Russian workers are an exploited class.

Fear of the consequences of the masses’ indignation often induces the class holding parliamentary power to make concessions which the masses would not otherwise have obtained

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, “culture.” It's an old ploy of the bourgeoisie.

Control would be exercised by a few over the political conduct of the many by first acquiring that control over the labor and earnings of the great body of people.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for suppressing another.

Harmony? No! Class war! Hatred to the death for the criminal bourgeoisie!

The socialist proletariat rejects any responsibility for the events being brought about by a blinded, a maddened ruling class …. All responsibility falls to the wielders of power today! It is "to be or not to be!" World-history is the world-court!

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

The class struggle is the central conflict of the world; all others are incidental.

There are two great enemies of thought and progress, the aristocracy of royalty and the aristocracy of gold.