Michel Foucault Quotes

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas.

Genius is initiative on fire.

You can look at Bad Religion, and, really, almost everything I've ever done was an exercise in creativity. I've always had a desire to challenge and question authority, and that's where the fire inside comes from. I challenged authority out of a desire to make things better, not to be nihilistic about it.

Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to others in the things you make.

Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics.

While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.

The great thing about ideas is that every new idea leads to two more new ones. It’s the opposite of a gold rush, where the more people who show up in 1849 to get that gold in California, the faster the gold runs out. Ideas are not like that; ideas breed.

Sometimes people invent things because they want to stay alive or feed their children or conquer the village next door. But just as often, new ideas come into the world simply because they're fun. And here's the really strange thing: many of those playful but seemingly frivolous inventions ended up sparking momentous transformations in science, in politics and society.

It's so difficult to actually come up with ideas that you really fall in love with, you know? That's the most difficult thing about filmmaking - and that's my main challenge in life.

A good idea is something like an emotion, you just can't keep it in.

Didn't I seize the fire of ideas and make them leap, tear, fly, sing

One's range [of ideas] is limited by one's interests and imagination and by one's passion.

I love thinking, I love coming up with great ideas. I just get excited. Sometimes if I get a big idea, I'm just like a kid, like I've found a new toy.

I don't need an alarm clock. My ideas wake me.

Once you find the right idea, then go ahead and embellish it.

You get all the puzzle parts together enough to say the puzzle is complete. It's a script. In the process of realizing that, new ideas can come, one way or another. Through a happy accident, they just come to you.

The ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.

For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one idea leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander.

Nothing drives progress like the imagination. The idea precedes the deed. The only exceptions are accidents and natural selection.

I was just infused with ideas and I would dream about it and wake up and go, "Oh, I have another idea about Walter White." It was so well written. And it just got into my soul.

Think, the successful idea is always in your mind. Think it out.